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Introspect

Introspect is an app to encourage self-care for nurses and midwives. People record audio about their thoughts, feelings and day-to-day lives into the app. The audio is then played back to them in a different voice, allowing them to reflect on their own feelings and gain emotional distance.

web app development

Client
Design Innovation Lab at the University of Sydney
Go to project

Designed by Natalia Gulbransen-Diaz and Yanyi Feng from the Design Innovation Research Group at the University of Sydney, Introspect forms part of a research study on mitigating the emotional challenges facing nurses.

The app asks questions that encourage the user to open up about their day, and records their responses. It will then play back all the audio that’s been recorded, in a slightly distorted voice so it sounds like it’s coming from a friend. That allows people to gain emotional distance on their own feelings, and hopefully empathise with themselves as they would with a friend.

The app recently won a gold Good Design Award from Good Design Australia.

The three states of the app: audio prompt, recording and playback

The user will then be prompted again, with the question “Having heard that back, what are you thinking?”. The app records their response again, and plays it back. This adds a second layer of reflection, encouraging people actively consider their own emotional state.

The app itself is built as a Progressive Web Application, using React, a custom audio module and Google speech-to-text recognition.

Are you a researcher who could use a website, app or data visualisation to complement your study? Just need something built? Get in contact.

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