Beat-it

Beat-it is a smart phone application that asks users to express their emotion through shaking with their phone. Based on the intensity of the shaking movement, Beat-it starts to play a song that matches the user’s arousal. The user has to reflect whether or not this song fits his emotion, if yes, he can start the game by moving his phone to his hart. He accepts the song and implicitly his emotion. The challenge of the game is to swing along with your phone on the beat. The game will distract and calm down the user. After the game, the user can save his score. As a reward for the game, he now hears his favorite song. On top of his favorite song he hears himself sharing helping thoughts and insights concerning his emotion. Beat-it uses embodied emotion interaction, game play and music to emotionally and physically calm down users. Beat-it regulates emotions generated by the knowledge system through reappraisal, generates positive emotions through the body by game play and physical interaction and diminishes emotions generated by the attention system by distraction. Beat-it proved to calm down users and regulate negative emotions to prevent
aggressive outbursts.

Annet Bruil
mentors: V.T. Visch, N. Tromp
master thesis, July 2011