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KALM provides relief to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients by enabling remote monitoring of home appliances. Inspired by Exposure and Response Prevention therapy, the app assists users in identifying obsessions and reducing episodes through the implementation of checking limits, encouraging them to confront and overcome compulsions.
Despite originating as a student project, KALM reflects my early passion and commitment to UX design, leveraging my interdisciplinary background in psychology and computer science. Notably, user research revealed a remarkable 95% satisfaction and desirability rate. KALM's success was further recognized with the Students' Choice Award, distinguishing it among all other projects from the same course.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients often endure persistent fear and anxiety driven by compulsive checking behaviors. KALM aims to alleviate these symptoms by enabling remote checking and offering features like a checking limit and a "shake-it-off" function.
Before - The "Vicious" OCD Cycle
The OCD cycle consists of 4 basic parts: obsessions, anxiety, compulsions, and temporary relief. It's considered a “vicious” cycle because once you get pulled into it, it gains momentum and strength, making it even more difficult for you to get out.
After - The Positive KALM Cycle
With KALM, users can either check or shake their arms for relief during an episode, depending on whether they have exceeded the checking limit. By systematically desensitizing users to obsessive thoughts through the checking limit and shake-it-off feature, I successfully broke the OCD cycle, transforming it into a positive Kalm cycle that significantly improves the quality of life for OCD patients.
80% of the OCD symptoms relate to checking anxiety concerning patients' home appliances.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) patients suffer from anxiety stemming from intrusive thoughts, unable to distinguish between legitimate concern and intrusions.
Consider an OCD patient who obsesses about whether their doors are closed. The compulsion to rush home and check provides temporary relief. However, repeatedly acting on this compulsion shortens the time between episodes, leading to dependency, anxiety, and depression—a negative OCD cycle.
help people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) ease their concern and improve their life quality?
We explored how non-primary actor can assist OCD patients.
To refine the scope of our 10-week project, we initially targeted college students recently diagnosed with OCD. Once the primary actors were identified, we investigated how non-primary actors, such as family and friends, could contribute to the solution.
We tried to empathize with OCD Patients by talking to professionals and sending out surveys.
To understand OCD patients’ daily struggles and look for ways to improve their conditions, we first conducted an informational interview with a UW counselor to learn about OCD from a professional perspective.
Due to the limited access to real OCD patients and privacy concerns, we built an anonymous internet survey and share it with the Reddit OCD group, focusing on their daily experience, family, type of obsessions, etc.
Research Highlights
One participant expressed a fear of being perceived as weird when they experience an episode and perform their coping rituals in public.
OCD patients spent hours checking if doors were closed, stoves were off, windows were shut, having difficulty leaving home and starting a routine life.
When asked to describe a magical tool that can help them with their lives, they wanted a device that could help them distinguish intrusive thoughts from legitimate concerns.
We assumed non-primary actors could help OCD patients make their lives easier. However, all of the survey participants felt strongly against involving their family and friends in our design because they wanted to minimize the burden on them.
Design Goals
I want to bring control into patients' lives and alleviate anxiety caused by checking compulsions in a home setting.
Allow users to perform rituals inconspicuously in public and not fear about public perception.
Reduce compulsive checking frequency to enable users to go about routine lives.
Help users distinguish between legitimate concerns and intrusive thoughts
I proposed a smart home system to allow users to check remotely to get relief without rushing home or having a panic attack in public.
For this goal, I created a popup state to remind users to fight their obsession if the smart home system indicates that all appliances are safe.
ERP is the gold standard for OCD treatment. In ERP, you voluntarily expose yourself to the source of your fear over and over and over again, without acting out any compulsions to neutralize or stop the fear.
I got inspiration from the Exposure and Response Prevention therapy to achieve this most important goal.
I added a checking limit feature to prevent users from making responses to their fear exposure. When they exceed the checking limit, the popup state will show up with a customized KALM message. Users will then have to shake their arms to distract themselves from the obsession, shaking the intrusions off. As the system encourages them to decrease checking limits over time, users will gradually gain more control over their lives.
KALM empowers users to check the status of crucial appliances on a wearable remotely, allowing them to maintain their daily routines. The system notifies users if they check too frequently in a brief period. Rooted in ERP therapy, KALM aims to reduce these episodes by imposing a checking limit and delivering a personalized message to encourage users to confront and overcome their compulsions.
By systematically desensitizing users to obsessive thoughts with the checking limit and shake-it-off feature, I successfully broke the OCD cycle. I turned it into a positive KALM cycle that can significantly improve OCD patients' life quality.
The paper prototype of the wearable device, including 3 possible states: All-Good state, Non-Ideal state, Pop-up state.
• All-Good State: All home applications are in the ideal state, e.g. the door is closed, the stove is off.
• Non-Ideal State: At least one application is not in the ideal state.
• Popup State: User has checked more than a limit of times, a pop-up KALM message notifies users to shake their arms to remove the message.
The phone application is designed to mainly help users to set up sensors, set the checking limit, customize the KALM message, and track checking frequency.
Due to the challenge of accessing OCD patients, we conducted moderated usability tests with 3 college students.
We created a specific scenario by instructing them to simulate having OCD, focusing on the obsession of checking the status of home appliances.
Data Summary
• Customization of status colors is crucial as it could be another trigger for obsessions.
• The system should alert users of status changes to maintain trust.
• Users don't know what to do when they see the pop-up KALM message.
• Providing text explanations alongside the status colors is necessary for user understanding.
I designed UI and interactions to calm users and discourage checking.
Every interaction I designed in this app is to discourage checking behavior by limiting checking frequency and the number of checked objects. So, in my design, the path to check on an appliance is intentionally long, and users can only check one object at a time.
Angie Li © 2024. All Rights Reserved.
Hope for World Peace 💛
