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>> Mary Czerwinski: Okay. Everybody, welcome. It's my pleasure to introduce
Pablo Paredes here today from Berkeley, and Pablo is going to talk about our
favorite topic today, his research on calming and anti-stress technologies.
Thank you, Pablo.
>> Pablo Paredes: Thank you, Mary. Well, hello, everybody. As Mary said, I
come from Berkeley. I'm going to spend two minutes explaining a little bit
about my own so that it doesn't sound weird, some of the things I've been
doing.
So I basically joined the school two years ago after, you know, doing a lot of
research on my own in anxiety because of a family member who actually has OCD,
obsessive compulsive disorder. And through him, I cognitive behavioral
therapy, because after ten years of cocktails of medication, he was making
basically no progress.
And I was able, after my -- I did actually a Master's before and after my
working in this company, Miami, I was able to find a bilingual therapist,
because he speaks only Spanish. So I took him to Miami. And in one month, 75
percent of his symptoms were reduced. What didn't happen in ten years.
So that's what got me very intrigued. Like wait a minute, what is this CBT
thing? This is only talking, right? There's nothing else and doing things.
So I started reading and researching and I actually got pretty interested in
this whole field of CBT. I started spending some of my own money, hiring some
students in my home country in Ecuador. I had to go back there. It was
mandatory for me to go back because of my Fulbright scholarship. As a matter
of fact, I couldn't take a job offer from Microsoft. They made me an offer,
and they couldn't handle my visa, so I had to go back.
So I was working there, and I was paying and basically spending a lot of money.
And then, you know, after like four or five years, I was working. I went to
Brazil doing strategic management and lots of other different things like, you
know, product development. I decided that I want to quit everything and just
do it right. I'm doing research at night. I'm going to do research during the
day.
So I quit my job, Intel told me no, you can stay as a director as broadband and
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all these things. I told them no, I'm just quitting.
which has been my home for the last two years.
And I went to Berkeley,
So now I'm really putting my interests in play so it's been fascinating two
years. So far, we've been doing calming tech and we've been doing all this
other stuff too, because my interest is a broad interest in mental health.
However, lately, the focus has been a little built on stress, because seems
like stress is looming as, you know, one of the main reasons for an
exacerbating factor for almost everything in mental health and a lot of
problems also in the physical health.
You know, right now obesity is affected by stress. Cardiovascular problems are
affected by stress. So stress is important, but the biggest issue that we have
with this stress is that people understand it, care-givers understand it, that
it's a problem. Everybody knows that it's a problem, but it's just difficult
to manage.
It's not as if you tell people, just relax, right. That would be wonderful if
people would just relax, that would be the end of it, but it's not. That's why
there's cognitive behavioral therapy for, you know, anxiety management and all
these group sessions and, you know, that's why we talk with people and we rant
about things and we vent. There are so many ways to do it.
The issue, though, is that contemporary, you know, stress management looks more
like this. You don't manage it well, and then when you're super stressed and
you go get drunk and start hitting things and kicking and fighting and yelling.
So the problem is you don't catch stress early on and you don't do much when
it's building up, you know, stress builds up over time. So it would be great
if we could do something with technology to actually understand stress as it
grows, and we help manage it. Manage it because you don't need to eliminate
the stress. Stress is also useful for you to actually do stuff, right? It's
the way that you get things done.
You confront some challenge and then you get anxious and stress and that's
good, because it gets you moving and doing stuff to try to solve the problem.
The issue is when you don't handle it well. When you let it, you know,
overcome your abilities to actually cope with it.
And one thing that, this is not proven, this is just my perspective.
But one
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thing, you know, but it's been written in books like, you know, Why Zebras
Don't Get Stressed by Sapolsky in Stanford.
Basically, you know, animals are very interesting. They get stressed, like
zebras when they are being hunt and they run. When they're done with running,
they just relax again. They don't keep being stressed. So there are two
interesting things there is that they actually use stress usefully, but they
don't remain stressed. And second, they do something with stress, when stress
appears. And that, I think, used to happen with us as humans in the past. We
used to see some threat and then we'd either run or yell or scream or kick or
whatever.
But what happens now that we have so many stress that comes through a computer
or through a device. It comes to you and you get stressed and what do you do?
Do you yell in your office or like jump or run? No, you just sit there mulling
your stress. Feeling worse.
So there is these very important component, physical component that shouldn't
be. You know, it's not only mental, that's the confusion that some people
have. No, it's not only mental. There's this huge interaction with the
autonomous nervous system. You actually need to get moving. You need your
blood to flow. You need to start breathing at a different rate to actually do
something with stress.
However, before I actually get into what we're doing about stress, I just want
to launch here a question, which I think is not completely answered by the
community who is doing stress in general. It's stress is not thoroughly or
uniformly defined. Even in the manual for mental disorders, not listed as an
issue. Not an issue. It's not listed, as depression and anxiety is, it's not
listed as a disease.
So what is it? You know, there's some definitions from Cohen and Lazarus and
others who said, you know, it's the ability to -- you have to cope or not with
some threat or some problem. And then it's cognitive, but it's also, you know,
the environmental components and the perception of what the threat is, you
know. It's like it's one way to explain, some people say oh, no. Stress, you
always simple to define when you see a threat.
I'm like yeah, what if I'm in a Mission District in San Francisco? If it's me,
I get stressed, but if it's like Chuck Norris or somebody who can fight, he
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doesn't care. He doesn't get stressed, right? He can kick anybody. So it
depends on what is the perception that you have to deal with, with the problem.
It's not only about environment and what you think you can do.
So stress is not thoroughly defined and what calmness means too. So I think
it's an open question. I'm not trying to generate a lot of discussion here,
but I think it's fair to ask what calmness means. Some people believe that
calmness is about just, like, sitting still and relaxing, doing nothing.
Well, not necessarily. You can be calm and also be moving and doing stuff. Or
calmness is about having these relaxing thoughts. Not necessarily, you may
actually be dealing with a problem, solving it, but you could do it in such a
way that you're actually coping correctly. So I think it's interesting to see
that stress actually has to do with trying to confront and cope with some
problems. So calmness should also be a way to help you deal with this problem
in a way that doesn't actually hurt you. That's the way I see calmness.
Once again, this is open for discussion.
the way we see it.
But I wanted to bring it up front,
So what are we trying to do right now in Berkeley? We have a team, my advisor,
John Canty, has a team of students who are doing hard work, some were DSP and
machine learning and a lot of interesting stuff. And basically, there are some
problems that have been coming out of it and we're putting everything together
to try to close the loop, because the way we see stress, it's not only about
monitoring it and knowing how it looks. It has a lot to do how you deal with
it.
So we're trying to do from the monitoring part to the intervention, all these
components. And, of course, the detection part which is the algorithmic thing.
So starting with the first part, which is the biometric monitoring -- by the
way, feel free to stop me at any point if you have any questions. We don't
have to wait 'til the end. This is a ninth iteration of a system that's been
developed over the last five, six years by John Canty's student, Reza Naima.
You can contact him there if you want to.
He's actually brilliant at doing this. He's embedded all these things in one
little one square inch -- well, a little more than a square inch device. It's
very portable. You can measure a lot of interesting stuff. And also, the
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derived metrics.
I guess all of them are interesting.
You know, there's a lot of research that's been done around electrodermal
activity, you know, research at MIT and effective computing lab with Ross,
Picard and all them.
I think heart rate variability is one of the most ones, right. It's the one
that's closely tied to the autonomous nervous system part, the physical part of
stress. For those of you who are not too -- you know, don't know the
autonomous nervous system, I'm not going to live a lecture about it. I want to
explain basically that autonomous nervous system is everything, all of the
nervous components that we don't have conscious control. It's just working,
right. Like digestion and breathing and the heart. So we cannot stop the
heart consciously, right, so it's autonomous. And there's two components, the
parasympathetic and the sympathetic components which basically are two elements
of that system, one that works with arousal when you get super excited, you
know it activates and gets your blood pumps to your limbs so you start running
faster. And it gets your breathing faster so you can react better.
And the other one is more like, you know, the relaxed movements of digestion
and other types of things. So basically, those two are working there and heart
rate variability is so far showing pretty interesting correlations with the
alterations of these two components.
Actually, Reza's thesis is -- he's a bioengineering student so he's trying to
see if he can actually map those parasympathetic and sympathetic variations
through some of these different derivatives. So it's pretty interesting.
But so far, heart rate variability was basically doing was giving us a small
peeping window, I will say, towards what's happening with our body in stress.
So we have this thing, and the way we're basically, you know, this is the
parasympathetic and the sympathetic systems. The way we basically analyze
these is by observing the variation of these two systems or the way that it
should work these two systems by measuring the variations between -- I'm sorry,
it's actually this one. Between the R intervals, you know.
I don't want to get into a super detail of heart rate variability now
[indiscernible] because there's a lot. There could be a whole talk about this.
But basically, analyzing the variations between the peak intervals and heart,
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it's not heart rate.
It's heart rate variability.
Do you have a question?
>>: Yeah. So when you're talking about stress, it seems if you talk -- you
know, there is also the time domain. So there is a stress, you know, of you
hear a loud noise, it puts you into stress, like what you were talking about
the zebras. And then there's stress of you giving a talk in front of an
audience, which is a longer time period. But there's also the stress of, you
know, I have a job which is stressful.
So when you're talking about these metrics or these measurements, what type of
stress do they capture?
>> Pablo Paredes: Yeah, so far, the ones that we've been using to study is
more the acute one. Acute stress, rather than the chronic one that looms over
time.
However, that's a very good question, because the way that we have been trying
to study acute stress is by actually screening people with chronic stress. And
the reason we're doing -- we've done that is because for calibration purposes,
you want to kind of measure people who have kind of a similar state of stress,
because if you observe people who have some sort of stress, chronic stress
alteration, let's say an anxiety disorder or not even that, let's say somebody
died in the family, that type of stress can last for months. Or if you have a
divorce or something like that, that type of stress can last for months.
So if you don't control for that, you will see that not necessarily that the
heart rate is altered permanently, but it actually overshoots very quickly.
Once you apply the stressor, the person who has chronic stress immediately
reacts and goes through the roof. And it's interesting, because also the
calming part is also they kind of like feel like super calm. We basically
control for these, you know, life events and mental health.
But there was this guy who was borderline, and there's actually a scale that's
used to screen people for these type of studies. He was borderline, and I
remember when I was doing the study with him, he was like when we applied the
stressor, he went to like ten of stress, subjective stress. And then when he
was in calming, he's like I'm one now. He's like overshooting both on the
stress phase and also in the calming phase. Because he's already, you know,
very [indiscernible]. So it's very important, the question. We have not been
studying chronic stress. We have been studying acute stress with people who
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are supposed to be inside normal parameters of behavior and cognition.
All these type of DSP things have to happen to extract the function and
basically, at the end, you get some sort of curve that shows heart rate
variability and it basically changes with stimulus.
One of the best stimulus to calibrate heart rate variability that we have been
using is this orthostatic test which is basically you ask the person to lay
down and be just calm for a few minutes and then you ask them to stand up super
fast. So you stand up super fast, heart rate immediately changes. You get
anxious, very anxious. Even though there's no cognitive perceptual, it's just
the body being moved. That's what people use and people who do cardiovascular
analysis, he try to calibrate against this type orthostatic test. So it's a
calibration test.
So this is one of the measures, the metrics that we are doing. The other one
that's very interesting is speech. And it's very interesting in many ways,
because it actually, it's not invasive. The other one, you actually have to
wear something on your body. I'm sorry, when they're actually did I think
there was a little picture there of the guy wearing something. Yeah, like this
guy's wearing -- there's many ways. Right now, the latest one actually is not
a chest strap, it's actually an ear clip that we have. You don't need the head
band anymore, just the ear clip, because you need to have some sort of
[indiscernible] graphic analysis. SPO 2, oxygenation of the blood you can
derive from that, actually, heart rate variability. So the earlobe actually
provides that. Or the finger.
The problem is when you're doing [indiscernible] stuff, you put something in
the finger and then you get one hand up and you cannot do more. So it's better
to use the ear. But still you have to put something on people, either a chest
strap or something.
So that's why -- sorry I'm jumping back and forth. That's why speech is very
interesting. This is something that has been explored for the last few years
and actually there is some studies from Georgia Tech that triggered this whole
interest. And then there's a student of [indiscernible], he's actually working
for MSR now. So you can ask him personally. He's actually -- there's his
name. His name should be somewhere. Is his name here? Oh, I didn't put his
name. Okay. I'll give you his name later, okay. Howard Chang was at student
at my lab. Now he works at, where, Palo Alto MSR? Silicon valley MSR. Yes,
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he's there.
So he basically studied speech, and in a nutshell, what we can see from speech
is that you get two very interesting components. One is the prosthetic
component. When you get stress, there is stressors, also show the cognitive
load, and that cognitive load basically gets you to start speaking differently
because the processing that you -- the normal ways that you do for processing
starts changing, but it's very minor. It's not that you necessarily feel. You
have to train yourself to feel like. Psychologists, psychiatrists, they can
detect sometimes these variations. He actually worked with psychologists and
psychiatrists to try to understand what they call the pressure speech, things
like that.
Which is basically, in a nutshell, is basically people speaking, making a bit
longer pauses than normally between words or sentences, but micro second
differences that basically indicated. That's the prosthetic component. The
other component also is very interesting, which is the glottis.
So when you get stressed, there is muscular tension, and actually the tension
in the neck is popularly known to be a very good sign of stress. Well, that
tension affects your vocal tract. Miniscule changes. Yes?
>>:
Is that when you start to get that glottal fry?
>> Pablo Paredes:
>>:
Yes.
[inaudible] something else?
>> Pablo Paredes:
I'm sorry?
>>: You know when you get that kind of frog, when you hear somebody kind of
grr, the kind of glottal, I think it's called the glottal fry, is that the
sound that you're talking about?
>> Pablo Paredes:
>>:
No.
Or it's too fast to even tell?
>> Pablo Paredes: No, it's too fast to even tell. It's not a very specific
noise or anything. It's too fast. It's something that you really have to
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train yourself, as I said, some psychiatrists actually detect some variations
in the speech after being 20 years of listening to depressed patients or
anxious patients, they actually developed this ability to understand the
difference. Like a good musician understands a minor variation. Yeah.
>>: Is it kind of different that you have to have a good baseline of how this
person speaks when he's not stressed to be able to detect an absolute
difference that you can tell?
>> Pablo Paredes: No, it's not an absolute difference. I think you can
eventually reach a better approximation of an absolute difference, and that's
some of the work that [indiscernible] have been pursuing. In the end, there's
some personal element, that's more personal.
He worked with I think, 80 persons over the course of two years and we had two
psychiatrists to gather the data and then try to explore this. And he actually
got some sort of a generic tool, but it applied to very specific case, which
was depression in that case, and he got some good results, but that was for
that specific problem.
If you want to generalize other types of variations of how stress looks in
different people or how fear looks, so far it's not completely done. But I
think it can be done. It's just a matter of keep getting more data and
processing.
But the great thing is that, you know, the toolkit that he developed, it's
called the Ammon Toolkit, and he basically got a best prize paper and all that.
He basically did all this type of components, from a very simple microphone.
There's no special microphone. It's a simple microphone.
And at this point, he actually got it completely developed for the cell phone.
So it works with a cell phone. He basically got, I think some results are
here. He basically got to compare with positive and negative emotional clips,
a study that was done for another project before the OpenSmile project and also
for stress very increase versus stress decrease, and he got actually better
results than the previous system, this OpenSmile system, which was done with
much more complex systems rather than a simple microphone.
So far, so good. Progress is being made. I think another long-term voice
could be a very good tool to actually measure maybe arousal and maybe some
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emotions.
Not all of them, but some of them.
So this is a toolkit, I think he's actually making it available as open source.
So if you want to follow up with him, you know, you just have to write an email
to him, pick up the phone. He's at MSR.
The other thing that we're explores from sensors perspective is one that I'm
very interested and I'm actually working with another student is like let's
forget about any other sensor. Let's just use what we have, right. Let's just
use cameras and mouse and mice and keyboards to detect stress.
Why not? I mean, there's already some research that was done in Scotland, I
think, by some people where they can actually detect fear through the keyboard.
And basically, what they are measuring is also the pauses between the key
strokes. See, it's a normal key. We weren't talking about pressure on the
keyboard or pressure in the mouse. We actually were tempted to work with one
of the mouse that Microsoft has, you know, the pressure mice. It will be
interesting and we may do it at some point. But we just want to see if we can
do it with a normal mouse. Just can we do wit a normal mouse.
And the mouse, what we're trying to measure is basically the cognitive load
through your limbs. Limbs get affected, you know, through cognitive loads and
emotional components. Right now, we're capturing all the data. We're in the
process of getting data over the summer and we hope to get results. But we
have seen some sensibility in good mice, though, not in any mouse. You need
gaming mouse, that level of precision to actually get good data.
Normal mouse doesn't get you enough information.
mouse. We're working on that.
You need the very precise DPI
The next one that we want to explore is the accelerometer in the smartphone.
There's actually some papers on people studying handshakes, which I find very
interesting. Handshake as a proxy for depression. And they actually
discovered some interesting correlations. So I said whoa, we keep handling the
smartphone, we should do something with it. We're going to actually start
working on that as soon as we're done with the mouse.
That will very cool. Then you have complete monitoring and you have to plug
nothing. You don't have to get people talking, because voice sounds
interesting. But you have to get people to talk. And that's not a trivial
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problem. That's actually a very complicated problem. We did some research on
how can we get people talking. It's not simple. You can top wire the phone,
but that's an ethical -- you have an ethical issue there.
This one might be easier.
>>:
If it's running with my phone, then you don't need to [indiscernible].
>> Pablo Paredes: Right. It's local in you phone, it should work fine.
That's why he really wanted to get it into the smartphone working well. So
this is kind of what we have on the sensors part. Now I'm going to switch
briefly to the intervention part.
As we told you, yeah, we sense all these things, but so what? What do you do
with it? So we have been exploring interventions also, mobile interventions.
We created a study that was actually a small study that was published in KAI
two years ago where we applied several interventions. We expressed people up,
all under IRB, you know, with permission, we stressed people out.
>>:
How did you stress them out?
>> Pablo Paredes: So we actually -- I have it here. Let me see. No, I don't
have it here, sorry. So we stressed them out with very simple stressors. One
is the math, the regressive instruction exercise, and the other one was the
Stroop color test, which is simple.
>>:
Using Stroop.
>> Pablo Paredes: Yeah, so we used Stroop and these regressive math exercise.
It was funny, because I was telling how would you apply math to CS or
engineering students? They know math so well. Well, that's why it's exactly
very good, very effective. Because once they make a mistake, they become so
self-conscious and they start -- they become stressed, rather than people who
don't care about math.
So the regression is very simple. I tell you, like start subtracting 17 from
2013 and get to zero. That's it. So you start 2013, and then you 1,900 -- you
start subtracting -- see, I'm stressed. I cannot even do it right now. You
start subtracting down and eventually you make a mistake. Always. There are
people who are very good and they actually don't.
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But, you know, they make a mistake. We actually added a time component. We
said in four seconds, you don't give an answer, then we ask you to go back to
the beginning again. Yes?
>>: Curious how you do that with the Stroop test, because you're not always
even detecting that you're making an error so when you're looking for speed, so
what did you do with Stroop?
>> Pablo Paredes:
Oh, no.
>>: I agree. I get that.
induce stress?
>> Pablo Paredes:
>>:
I'm wondering how do you use that to deliberately
Oh, Stroop?
Yeah.
>> Pablo Paredes:
>>:
The Stroop was a separate.
You start raising the speed of the color.
The Stroop test again?
>> Pablo Paredes: So the Stroop test, they basically show you a word -- sorry,
I don't have the slides. They show you the word with a color. But you have to
say the color that you see, not the word. So right now, it's blue, blue, it's
fine. But when I show you the word blue with red, you have to say red. Yeah.
>>: How do you know that they're stressed opposed to excited or -- how do you
know they're not enjoying it?
>> Pablo Paredes: Yeah, I mean, some people actually enjoyed it.
them at the end some comments. But not the majority.
We asked
>>: Does it matter if they're stressed negatively or stressed positively?
Presumably, it's the same sort of hormonal response.
>> Pablo Paredes: A very -- that's actually a very interesting question.
That's a very interesting. They call it the eustress and what was the other
one?
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>>:
Destress.
>> Pablo Paredes: Destress. Destress and eustress, right. Are they different
in any way? I think hormonally and maybe the biological components are very
similar. We are not there yet. We just got a few metrics, right.
Now, one of them gets you doing things. The other one gets -- I don't know.
It's very debatable. Like they say that some of the greatest painters and
writers were like they had OCD. They just kept writing. They were sick. And
they just kept writing fantastic stuff or painting nonstop. Even the Saints
for those who have like Catholic, like I used to be Catholic, you know, they
just -- there's all these things and you read and they just kept whipping
themselves. They were obsessive compulsive.
So is it good, bad?
>>:
I don't know.
It's how you interpret it.
So you're inducing OCD, then?
>> Pablo Paredes: No, no, we're not. So where we induce those stressors and
we actually got a curve I'll show you later and they actually work. These were
some of the interventions. One was the guided breathing exercise. The second
were some games and haptic feedback.
The guided breathing was basically using a small bracelet that we designed, and
we asked them to breathe when the thing vibrates and stop breathing when it
doesn't vibrate. It was more haptic. We wanted them to close their eyes and
not to hear anything, just to feel through the skin and get them breathing.
Very interesting, very interesting. Some people were really relaxed, and some
people were extremely anxious at the end. The ones who were relaxed, most of
them -- I didn't do a thorough analysis. I should have, but I didn't -- were
singers, sports people, people who do yoga, people who know how to breathe
already. People who don't know how to breathe, you know, at slow paces, they
start hyperventilating like stop this thing, I cannot -- I don't want to
breathe anymore. Why are you making me breathe?
So that's the interesting thing. People who know how to breathe actually did
well. People who didn't know, they actually much worse.
>>:
When you say did well, you mean calmed down?
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>> Pablo Paredes: Calmed down, yes, yes. So interesting. The games was also
interesting. Off the shelf, we picked two games. One was the guy running and
jumping things and the other one was the balls we have to put into. We didn't
do a third research, [indiscernible] what type of games. But we wanted
something that doesn't get people super engaged like with numbers and things.
But you do get people engaged with gaming. That's the issue.
Some people actually say oh, yeah, this kind of distracted me, and that was
what we wanted to do with games, just get you distracted for a few minutes. As
a matter of fact, the inspiration came from a very, you know, empirical source.
My brother used to tell me he has OCD. Sometimes for him to relax, he plays
with his cell phone. He kind of lets the mind off and he relaxes. I said,
well, let's see how it works.
So it did work with some people. They actually said oh, cool. Some people got
super engaged with the game. Like no, no, don't. Okay. It's over, no, I have
to finish. It's like no, stop, right? They actually get more anxious. So
again, it's a double-edged sword.
The haptic feedback was actually used with this bracelet that I told you. We
used it for doing accupressure. This was also, you know, we wanted to see if
accupressure has any significance. It was also kind of like, you know, just to
be humorous about this thing, let's see if accupressure works, because there's
a lot of debate whether accupressure works so we were essentially
[indiscernible] Chinese medicine. One of the guys was from Taiwan and he said
this thing should work.
So there is actually, according to that, some pressure points in your wrists
and here. So we asked them to actually press against with the bracelet, press
against your wrist and press against your chest. I surprisingly enough, some
people actually felt some relief. I don't know if it was novelty or the
accupressure. That part, I cannot guarantee at this point. So it was a very
exploratory study. I think it might work, it may not.
But it definitely was awkward. Everybody felt very awkward because it's not
part of the culture. That's the other problem with stress, it's a perceived
component, and there's a stigma associated with it. So you ask people to do
weird stuff, and then people -- even if it's good for you, they still don't
feel well.
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Actually, somebody came from National Taiwan University to visit, and he saw
this thing. He's like oh, that's fantastic, yeah, yeah. He's from Taiwan.
He's like, this is great. People do it all the time. I said, here nobody saw
it that way. Here, everybody's like why are you asking me to press my wrist
and my chest. Like weird.
>>:
Did you measure changes in sensor values for the different interventions?
>> Pablo Paredes:
Yeah, yeah, we did.
Yes?
>>: Just curious. Sometimes these can be weird to set. Did you look for
figuring out where the actual motor point was to set the sensors before you put
them on people, or did you just kind of guesstimate?
>> Pablo Paredes: We guesstimate. We kind of tried, you know, with this from
Taiwan, we read some books and where the points should be, but it's
complicated, yeah. This was more like let's play with this, rather than
anything. It wasn't like should we press here. Actually, as a matter of fact,
it's like it's here, not even in the middle. It's like in the side, according
to the books. It's a guesstimate, yeah. So this one is more like a play.
>>: We can take it offline, but there are ways to use electric current to find
out where the right motor point is, if you take it further at some point.
>> Pablo Paredes: The one that actually got it super excited, was the social
intervention. That was the fourth, the social one. Okay. How do people calm
down? One very effective way is through interaction with other humans. They
go and talk with their friends, their lived ones. They say oh, I have this
problem and they calm them down, right? They tell them things. Words that
help people regain their calmness.
So what we did is we basically, instead of applying an intervention directly,
we send a message to a loved one, a friend. She works for Microsoft, first day
here today, actually. She's a student from Berkeley. She's starting today.
Yeah. We basically said, you know, she's stressed, do something about it.
Make her laugh or tell her something positive. And they sent something like
this. Message is like this, like for me, means nothing. I mean, what's Ducks,
bears and motorcycles? Well, she started laughing, like man, this is great,
yeah, yeah. And she felt so relaxed. She said, I'm not just relaxed, I'm
16
empowered.
I had to ask her, what is this ducks? Oh, that was a vacation where we
actually went through this lake and we saw a duck and in the middle there was
this bear that went through a motorcycle and it was so funny. Like three
words, five words, basically, in a nutshell, generated this whole complete
experience, more powerful than [indiscernible], right, which is imagination.
So we said man, this is cool, right?
>>:
Did you ask them who they contacted?
>> Pablo Paredes:
>>:
Yes.
We asked them who --
Did you ask for three?
>> Pablo Paredes: We asked for two people that we could tap, and most of the
people that they gave us were either best friends or boyfriend/girlfriend or a
mom or dad. Those are right people who they usually want to get in touch with.
Yes. And we got consent from them to, you know, send a message and we asked
them to be aware of the message, because we want to use the actual SMS, not
just a fake thing.
There's studies that have been done before in the past where they actually have
the loved one waiting in the room, and instead SMS, you ask the loved one to
come for a minute or two and comfort them and then leaves. So there was
evidence that people actually calm each other, you know. We know that, right,
empirically, but we wanted to do it through SMS and it was pretty cool. It
worked very well.
And most of the messages were either based on narratives or humor. Most of
them were like very funny things. Like they just started smiling. Or very
beautiful narratives to remember something. Some of them were more direct like
calm down, I love you very much. That also works, you know. That also works.
But most of them were more creative than that.
>>: [indiscernible] experiment, you got their consent to tap to these
messages?
>> Pablo Paredes: Yes. As a matter of fact, we actually ran later, based on
these findings, we ran a short Turk experiment where we wanted to see can
17
actually people create narratives out of bad moments, like you might tell
somebody, this is a bad moment. Can you actually create a humorous, funny
narrative around the bad moment. And I have some results, I'll publish it some
day.
But basically, we told them like there's this person who's taking a test, and
super stressed, and the person cannot study because of the stress. So can you
create a narrative. Has to be a narrative that's funny around that. And they
were very interesting, very, very creative things through Turk. Completely
unrelated people, had nothing to do with the person.
One of them, if I recall well, was this guy who said, like oh yeah, you ask
your friend to pretend he's God, and you ask him like oh, God, I need to pass
this test and then he said, well, how can I help you? Well, I don't know.
What is the subject? It's astronomy. And God says, that one I didn't pass
either. So that's what you want, to laugh. Once you get the laughter, then
you have a calmness. You don't need more than that. Once you get laughing,
then the whole test becomes irrelevant. It's funny now. It became funny.
Or this other one, I mean, there's all sorts of humor. This other one where
the person was saying like, oh, ask your girlfriend to call you and say oh,
honey, I have a problem and it's like I'm studying for a test. But this
problem is more serious. It's like what? I'm pregnant. Like what! And then
the person is like no, it's just a joke. Once you get the person completely
out of their test, then their mind, the test becomes nothing in front of
pregnancy, right?
So, I mean, I haven't explored the subject deeply, but we are very interested
in this reaction. Very interested. It's just words, right?
So at the end summarizing this intervention, what we did is basically we
observed that they are definitely context sensitive. This very same thing that
can calm you down can stress you out. Even the messages had some people who
were very like, they were reading and looking at me like they don't want to
have an intimate message in front of a stranger. It becomes stressful for them
to be in front of an intimate, powerful message.
The social network not only comes with empowers, but the last one is yeah,
well, I said you definitely need to train people to use these tools. It's not
something you can just launch.
18
>>:
Do you have any numbers to show you presented four different methods.
>> Pablo Paredes: Yeah. One of the numbers that I have here is this is
basically the stress curve. Oh, here are the phases that we applied. So we
basically applied the -- they entered the study, we calmed them, then we
applied Stroop, then we had an anticipation phase and then math and then we
calmed them again. And we basically plot the reaction. This is the subjective
reading of stress and we saw this is actually statistically significant P
equals 05.
People actually got stressed and calm with interventions that we had. Games
were less effective in general than others. The social network had the biggest
impact in terms of subjective stress.
>>:
[inaudible].
>> Pablo Paredes:
Yeah.
>>: When I read this paper, they're still stressed, like, you know, not at
zero stress.
>> Pablo Paredes: Well, this is the level they entered. So it's not that -yeah, when you walk into a room and you want somebody to be -- you ask them how
stressed, they always have a baseline. And then we actually get them to calm
the first down, calm them down. And this is actually a very interesting
question from our research perspective, because people say like, oh, you should
bring them to a baseline. Yeah, right, how do you do that?
Oh, just ask them to sit there. Well, that's an intervention.
them to do nothing. No, that's an intervention.
>>:
What would occur without any intervention?
Oh, just ask
So if you just had --
>> Pablo Paredes: Without any interventions, we will get them going up in the
stress. We will have reached maybe this level or this level of stress. They
will have remained stressed.
Oh, you mean apply -- I'm talking about applying only stressors. Yeah, only
applying stressors, no calmness. I mean, it will eventually go down. It will
19
eventually go down. But it won't go as fast. It will eventually go down,
potentially. I mean, it's just a 30-minute study. So eventually, it could go
down. They will go out with somebody. So that actually brings a fair
question, like do we actually need to do something, which is let the course of
life take care of it.
So that's why I posted the question initially, what is stress and calmness and
should we actually do something about it. I think there is some people who
would benefit from some sort of clue, some sort of intervention. There's some
people who just deal with it normally, just deal with the stress normally.
They are receiving it effective.
>>:
Ethically, we shouldn't let them leave the lab stressed out.
>> Pablo Paredes: No, ethically. We were mandated to calm them. That was
part of our IRB. We had to calm them down and leave. And they actually left,
pretty much at the same level that they entered. So the effect was, you know,
subtracted eventually.
There's a little snapshot of what HRV looked like in this same thing. And it's
harder to interpret HRV. It's a complicated measure, but you do see the peaks.
This is actually inverted PNS over SNS. You could plug it the other way
around. But sometimes it's the pure way to read it. So, you know, the lowest
is more stress rather than highest, right.
So you do see changes in HRV too, and we actually need to crunch some more data
on this HRV too to get better analysis. The problem that we're facing, though,
I don't know if you have been facing this, is that there's not a good
correlation between subjective and biometric stress. There's people who tell
you that they are super calm, and their HRV is just in the roof. But they keep
telling you that they are calm. And the other way around. There are people
who don't get too aroused, and they're like super stressed now.
>>: We noticed that with the [indiscernible] devices. There are people who
are super -- I'm super labile and then [indiscernible], if she's in here, is
just completely flat. We're very different.
>> Pablo Paredes: Well, there's this [indiscernible], these signals, are you
familiar with that? [indiscernible] is signals that some males develop, adult
males. They basically taught them systematically to shut down their emotion
20
and reading their body.
Like don't cry, you're a boy.
You should be strong.
And these people, some of these males get through all of life, and they just
don't read their body well, their emotions. And they eventually, you ask them
how are you doing? I'm fine, I'm fine, but you feel their muscles are
contracted. I'm fine. And then boom, the heart.
>>: Do you think if you look at their [indiscernible] in a relative scheme.
So there is a -- would you say that there is bias which is different between
different people, but when they say that now there are more ->> Pablo Paredes: Yeah, we actually normalize these. We rank these to the
comparisons. We actually want to rank them to normalize the baseline. Yeah,
some people vary at one point up, one point down. Some people vary at three,
four points up, four points down. So yeah, there is the relative variation.
At the end, you know, it's just the way you interpret things, the way the
subjective works.
The HRV, in theory, should be more reliable, because it's the heart. But this
is a tough question because how do you know who's lying? I mean, at the end,
what is stress? Is it a subjective problem? Is it a body issue? If I don't
feel like I'm stressed, am I or not? If I think I am not.
So this is actually where one of the big, big problems right now we're facing
with stress in general, because I've discussed this with psychologists.
People, there's these -- we have long conversation with [indiscernible] from
Stanford. We spoke like three hours like how do we solve this problem? It's
not an easy problem. He actually says you should do your thesis on this. I
was like Jesus Christ. Let's see if I finish it.
>>: If you just used the sensor data, physiologically, it's best for the human
race.
>> Pablo Paredes: From a physiological perspective, yes. Now, you can also go
from the other side. I agree, yeah, you will be healthier, right? However, if
you still feel like you're worthless and you do nothing, you start moving and
so it's like what's the balance between like I'm healthy, but I'm so miserable.
Or the other way around.
So it's a big debate.
At the end, what I'm trying to say here is there's not a
21
strong correlation between subjective and objective for some humans. And so
the question is maybe it's that humans are not -- some humans are not able to
read their body signals that well. And for example, actually, one of the
people who were able to match better the curves that I was compare, some of
them are again the musicians, sports people, people who are in touch with their
bodies more often and they kind of learn to read their body signals.
But no, this is just my personal comments.
So it's not theory at all.
>>: I think there's a relatively easy test you could do to ask people, you
know, to move different parts of their bodies or, you know, the finger test,
which finger he can you move and see if they can control their body parts.
That might actually translate to control of the other parts of their nervous
system. It might be an interesting point.
>> Pablo Paredes: It might be. Remember that this is autonomous nervous
system. So how much can you control?
>>: Well, when you ask somebody to breathe and that has an effect, you are
having effect.
>> Pablo Paredes: Agree with that part. So I think there's an indirect
relationship. I agree with you, yes. So it's more like using the body as a
proxy to help.
>>: Do we know, so you started off by saying that stress has a lot of
influence on our well-being. Do we know whether the self-reported stress or
the objective measured stress, which is more better correlated for our physical
well-being?
>> Pablo Paredes: Well, in theory, I think if you have a better ANS function,
you should have better physical well-being, because your functions will be
working better. But there again, the debate is well, I might be better, but
then if I mentally, I'm not healthy, then will that eventually also hurt my
body.
That's an open question. What I'm trying to say here is like the ANS function,
if you can maintain a better level of functioning of ANS, then your body
should, in theory, be better. You should avoid those cardiovascular, obesity
problems that we listed at the beginning.
22
But that's not completely correlated with your mental health and your
well-being, your perceived well-being. You could have a perfect body and you
could still feel like not loved, for example, and stress and things like that.
>>:
Also know what is the causality changes.
What causes --
>> Pablo Paredes: The that's -- this [indiscernible] the mind or the body, the
body or the mind, right. It's hard. I wish I could tell you, yes, I know it's
the mind and the mind controls the body and the other way around. I think
there's a lot of good research that has to be done to bridge that gap.
But at the end, one thing I can tell you is that you do need a person who has
strong self-efficacy. Somebody who believes that he can accomplish things.
Even if you have a crippled body, right. Sometimes that helps to have a better
perceived well-being. Sometimes it's the other way around. So it's very
cultural too. Depends how -- if you got to Rio de Janiero, everybody has a
fantastic body. That's what people live for there. Are they happy? On
average, they are the same than the rest of the world.
California has great weather. The average of happiness is the same. So yeah,
I mean, I'm not trying to evade your question. I'm just trying to pose that
there is context and mental and body that not necessarily they all come with
the final computation of well-being.
>>:
At least limit this question to at least [indiscernible].
>> Pablo Paredes:
You could limit, yes.
>>: Associate something where there are people, if I can [indiscernible] my
subjective stress levels but have a better stress in terms of the heart rate
variation measures and my health now, the physical measures ->> Pablo Paredes: Yeah, you can and that's what cardiovascular surgeons do.
They basically focus on that. They don't care if you are happy or not, if you
think that you're okay. Just your heart should be okay. Yeah.
I think the challenge is to bridge those two. That's the real rich complex
problem. That's what cardiovascular researchers do.
23
Just to close this thing, we also run some usability analysis of these things,
not only efficacy, to see how the people actually like things, and they like
the social network, I think, more. They thought it was better -- their
perceived efficacy was higher. If you compare it versus the other, the other
things, they also think it was the best. Not only good, but the best.
They say that they will use it in the future, and they also say that they will
frequently use it, more frequently.
So this doesn't mean that one is better than the other. I just want to stress
that. It's just from the specifics that we run, people like the social network
more from a useful perspective. They say that's something that I would like to
do.
The one that actually didn't work that well from the useful perspective was the
two guided accupressure and games. The accupressure for the awkwardness and
the games because they were -- we didn't do a good job with the games. That's
on our side. I think if you choose the right games, it might actually work
much better.
So that's kind of what we have done, and this is -- I have a few more slides on
what we are thinking that we could do too so that we can show you and share a
little bit of the ideas. We are really developing them, but they are a work in
progress.
One of them is machinima. So we, for those who know cognitive behavior
therapy, I actually wanted to run a video, but it didn't work. I'm sorry.
Maybe later I can share. It's in YouTube. I can tell you the link.
So what is machinima for those who don't know? Machinima is the mix of machine
and cinema, and basically machinima is people hacking through the, you know,
virtual worlds like Halo or the Sims or any of these, and they basically use
the characters as their actors. They become directors and they basically write
a script and they shoot their characters in the behaviors that they want to
shoot and then they edit and they create a movie out of it.
There's thousands of machinima videos on the web. I think Google invested like
$30 million in machinima.com recently because it's one of the biggest sources
of video content for YouTube.
24
So very interesting that the reason we are using machinima is many fold. One
is because the Sims for example has already very good emotional expressions.
The characters can show fear and sadness and happiness and many other things
that we want to use for emotion. It's also pretty good, good to hack and
manage and know what we want the actors to do. And basically, it's cheap,
right. Like 50 bucks, the Sims. This machinima, you are creating movies.
So the interesting part, it's not only in the technology. The very interesting
part is how to create the movie itself. So what we did is we basically
started -- I don't have this here, but we started from a basic manual, CBT
manual. So we are working with the UCSF team, the Latino mentor health team,
and they have a very effective CBT manual that I have been using for smoking
cessation interventions. And we basically use their manual and we read their
manual.
In their manual, they had things like this, like drawings and thinks. Okay,
wait. It had like tons of lines of writing and you have to, as a patient, read
and read and read and read, and some pictures like this. So CBT nowadays, for
that type of intervention through manuals, or even through the computerized one
like [indiscernible] and beating the blues and all these other CBT tools that
are out there, they kind of look like homework. And that's what you need the
patient to do, homework. They have to go back and do homework.
However, people don't like homework and don't like, you know, feeling like they
are doing homework. So we want to create movies. We want to actually do
movies around CBT so people can actually watch a movie, three-minute movie,
two-minute movie over an iPad or over a phone or over a surf or whatever.
So what we have been creating right now is the scripts. That's the hard part.
We have been translating the script from the manual to an actual movie, you
know. We took a short movie-making Hollywood, how do you make the movies.
Typical, like boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back. You can
change that with farmer gets farm. Or you get a Todd, you lose a Todd.
We start playing with that, and we're working with some psychologists on the
UCSF to create -- we want to create the tele novella for Latinos, actually, so
that you can actually -- Latinos love to -- we love to watch the novellas,
right? We keep watching novellas.
So that's something that we are good at.
Now, homework, not so good.
But
25
novellas, very good. So can we actually create a tele novella around CBT? So
it has to do smartly so people don't get bored. So we're working on hacking
these and getting a tele novella out. Hopefully next year or next month or
something.
So that's one of the things we're working on, machinima, as a way to paint a
layer of entertainment on to the. CBT.
The other thing that we're working is on tangible emotions. The reason we are
working tangible is because we definitely need, I mean, emotions are expressed
so much through the body and through all their senses and then spoken or the
mind. It's about touching. It's about smelling and feeling and doing so many
other things. Emotions are extremely, you know, very well expressed through
the body. So we wanted to use the body as a proxy, rather than the mind.
So we are creating what we call the happy cube. We have already some
prototypes. We basically have a bunch of sensors embedded in the happy cube
and a bunch of actuators which I'll show later. So we can, you know, embed the
voice part that our friend can have. We can embed some biometrics like SPO 2
on the sides of this thing. We will have accelerometers so we can know the
accelerometry that we're working on. You can even tie it to a computer and use
the sensors that are in the computer if you use it as a desktop device, right.
That's sitting on the desktop. Or you could have some sort of Bluetooth
detraction with your phone to actually get more data.
So at the end, what we want to capture is some contextual data and also the
stress related data that would help us approximate. But we don't want people
to see their numbers here or see their, you know, you are getting stressed or
something. No. We want very subtle messages. Like just change the color.
And when you see the things changing from green to red, then you might decide
that you actually want to do something about. It's more like a nudge, right.
Or you might decide you want
a paper. I'm supposed to be
playing with it. That's why
actuators, I'm sorry. We'll
us really interested. Scent
to -- for memory, right, for
to turn it off, like don't bother me. I'm writing
stressed. So just turn it off. Or you can start
we're actually adding some sensors. Some
have scent, for example. That's the one that got
is very powerful. Very powerful tool for people
memory recollection.
If I get you the right scent, it reminds you of some nice moment of your life,
26
fresh green, you know, freshly cut grass or freshly baked bread or something ->>:
[inaudible].
>> Pablo Paredes: Yeah. Right. So it will be interesting. Or we can embed
the SMS system. Just send a message. We want also, these systems are being
developed right now in pairs through the network so you can actually play games
with your loved one or maybe send like a queue, like, you know, we tap three
times in happy cube and the thing vibrates three times and that means I love
you or something.
So at the end, we want this tool for people to use their body and their
imagination and to connect with others. But not -- no email here. No email,
no time, no what's my next meeting, nothing. We don't want this to be another
smartphone with a weird shape because smartphones are very ambiguous too,
right? They can deliver good therapies, but they can also give you these
terrible emails that just get you so freakin' stressed.
No, this should not be an information device.
device.
This is a tangible emotion
The other thing that we're playing with is gaming and narrative. Sorry, this
is a lot of words. I only have two slides, but this is kind of last minute.
We have been teaching for two semesters a class that's called gaming and
narrative technologies for health. Actually, I created that class with another
student. In Berkeley, they give us a chance to create classes by students for
students with the sponsorship of a faculty member, John Canty in this case.
So we developed it and we have been trying to learn how you can actually
develop games and narratives correctly for health. And some of the things
we've learned are very interesting. The three main points is like to
understand the narrative, you know, that powerful narrative, you do need to
understand where the person sits.
We sometimes assume that you can apply any narrative to anybody and everybody
will react according to the powerful narrative. No. If you have a very
disempowering narrative already embedded in you, you already feel like you're
good for nothing, that's a different treatment.
We actually brought some people from the Palo Alto veterans association -- the
27
format of the class was we brought one speaker, expert in the field, and then
we brought one hour of design. So we did -- we brought the person from the
Palo Alto veteran association. She gave a talk on ill-formed narratives.
And then we explored, we did a one-hour design exercise around him, how can we
portray informed narratives, and how can we actually change them to an
empowering one.
So understanding narratives are very important. Focusing on strengths is the
other one. Sometimes you focus too much, and you could overcome depression.
Well, don't talk about depression. You could be faster, you could be stronger,
better, nicer. It's debatable but it's important to focus on that.
The other thing is externalization of problems. We have been playing with can
we externalize that problem. That problem that bugs the person. Can we make
it tangible to or, like, liveable. So we actually, I have actually a small -we are developing what we call the Monsters app. Basically, the Monsters app
is a way for you to create your monster. It could be a stress or I have a
whole prototype if you want to see later a PowerPoint prototype.
But basically, we have three components. One is the monster itself, and we
also want to show you that there's tons of other monsters in the area. Lots of
people with same problem. So that externalization and seeing other monsters,
people say I'm not alone, right? I'm not the only procrastinator in town or
stressed person in town.
Then we want to play games against the monster. We do something, but we want
the games to have meaning. So, for example, you play the patience game, you
have to hit the monster, but you have to wait five seconds. In the next round,
you have to wait eight seconds and the next. You have to learn to kind of
control yourself before you hit your stress.
At the end, you're playing. We're not claiming that we're curing anything
here, but what we hope to get is that people will remember, through these
metaphors, right, they'll say oh, yeah, yeah. I should be patient or I should
be -- it's kind of like planting a seed.
So we want to use that ability that humans have to remember things when, you
know, this fun and good experiences to teach, basically, people some lessons.
28
So this monsters app is one of the products. We created other interesting, for
example, there was this other thing that we came out of the class was the
funky. It was a rapper for an alarm clock. But the only thing that it did is
instead of you having to wake up and do nothing, you had to give three thanks
at the end of the day before you go to sleep and then three mantras at the
beginning of the day. That was it. Something like that.
There's lots of things you can explore just with narratives, with metaphors
with people. And we're very, very interested about that and working on that.
And the last thing is the dynamics. Dynamics of games are very important.
It's not only the look and feel. It's actually how you use the dynamics of the
game that actually matter too.
So that's kind of what we have been doing, basically playing, more or less.
That's why I feel blessed. I left my highly stressful job, and now I'm
playing. And yeah with a lot of passion. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
>>:
It's funny you say that.
>> Mary Czerwinski:
talk was going on.
We feel like we're playing and it's so much fun.
Any more questions?
I know we were asking a lot while the
>>: Just a quick observation. I think just to say thank you very much for the
enjoyable presentation. I love the final slide. You don't see that often, and
I wonder how many more years until people recognize it.
But other than that, why a typewriter? Finally, thank you for exploring such a
plethora of spaces. I think one of the strengths of the work is that you -every time you mention something, you say oh, yeah, well, we did another thing
like this. And just being able to see a page of all the things you've been
doing to explore this space, I'd love to have to share with people, because
it's so cool that you're taking this from so many perspectives to overlap.
>> Pablo Paredes:
Thank you.
>>: So if you don't have a page like that, please create it and send it to us
when you do, because I'm sure we'd all like to be able to reference it.
>> Pablo Paredes:
I'll do that, thank you.
29
>>: I
things
eating
chips,
that.
love how you're going with the implicit gaming approach to teach subtle
like patience and where you talked about micro goals for emotional
and getting the user to say, instead of eating, say, the whole bag of
they'll just say I'll eat ten. Just ten chips. Little things like
We were wondering if that would actually evoke long-term behavioral change, but
we don't know yet.
>> Pablo Paredes: That's the ultimate goal, long-term. As a matter of fact,
that's why -- I didn't mention that also. It's not only the power of
narratives, it's the long-term effect. That's the problem with behavior
change, right. You change somebody's -- you can change somebody's behavior
very easily once or twice. But then a habit removed or a new habit created is
much more complicated.
And sometimes, the way that I want to approach it is like I don't need to
lecture you about it. I need I to change your identity about it. Your
identity should change from a victim to a warrior. Actually played that game
with my family.
My father was super sick, very sick. He was almost like dying with some
respiratory problem. And I wanted to apply metaphors and see how it worked
completely not scientifically. It worked, because my sister was like
completely depressed.
I said no, wait a minute. This is not an issue. This is not like him having a
lung problem. We're mountaineers. And we're going up the hill. And we're
almost there, but we live in the Andes, so we know what a hill means, and we
know what a very big mountain means, right. So I couldn't tell her like oh,
we're sailors. No. We don't even know what a ship looks like. But we know
how a big mountain looks.
We're going up, and that's why oxygen is, you know, is less. But once we get
there, we'll see the other side, and we'll start going down. And everything
will get better and you will be the Mountaineer, who is the navigator, because
you're very good at finding things. And my mom will be the Mountaineer who
cooks, will be cooking good things for him. And I'll be the researcher.
30
So we played that game, and I asked them every week, how are you doing,
Mountaineer? And she told me, like, I feel so much relief. I mean, it helped
control stress, which was an important factor for him to be better. In
breathing, you cannot have a person who have lung problems to be stressed,
because the INS doesn't work well.
So it helped. I'm not saying there was a cure or anything, but it helped
manage that, that difficult moment.
I've been also talking with people in project management. Like project
management is so complicated. Sometimes it gets so annoying. Why don't we add
a layer of fun? Just like, you know, just like some characterization of the
project. Then you just play the game. Not all the time, but, you know, every
week.
And you use the narrative.
like a warrior.
Instead of being a victim of the project, it's more
>>: I think that's why scrubs work with developer teams, because they all come
together and help each other once a day and you feel like you're part of the
story.
>> Pablo Paredes: Yeah, and in Google, I cannot say a lot, but I was working
with security team during the summer, and one of the problems that people have
with security is a very complicated behavioral problem. It's these victim
identity. They think that they are at the mercy of hackers. So they basically
become -- their self-efficacy is no. They do nothing. And if they do it, they
do it. Who cares.
So we're trying to help them change their identity so that they become more
active, because they believe that they can actually do something against this
security threat, cyber security threat.
>> Mary Czerwinski:
>>:
Anything else?
That was great.
>> Mary Czerwinski:
>> Pablo Paredes:
All right.
Thank you.
Thanks.