The seed of Flowcus came from an examination of the value of play for mental wellbeing. Besides being a learning experience, play often involves a state of complete absorption in an activity: flow. Flow is a special psychological state that brings happiness, fulfilment, and focus.
As well as giving you a short-term high, the amount of flow you experience is linked with your long-term mental wellbeing. Functionally, you’re also better at what you’re doing in flow. We all experience flow in our lives without noticing, both because flow involves losing a sense of self and because it’s not trivial to understand and monitor your own mental state.
To get an objective measure of mental state, we settled on using EEG sensing to measure the electrical activity in the brain. Consulting with Imperial College experts, we confirmed that the ear is a reasonable site to gain a broad picture of brain activity. From existing academic research and our own experimentation, we were able to identify patterns of brain activity linked with flow.
The Flowcus system is made up of three elements: earpiece, chronometer and app. The earpiece is the core of the Flowcus system. It measures your brain’s electric field to identify patterns of brain activity linked with flow. It logs the measurements and transmits data to the app. It can also give you a subtle notification when you exit a period of heightened flow.
The chronometer displays your full daily flow cycle through the brightness of the lights around the clock face. While the resolution of the information is relatively low, compared with the app, the clock provides a valuable physical prompt for you to reflect on your flowfulness. It’s also a dock for the earpiece, to charge it when not in use.
The Flowcus app provides detailed information about your flow history, allowing you to identify, annotate, and track your most flowful times and activities. It’s also where you can personalise your experience with Flowcus with settings that put you in complete control of how and when the system interacts with you.
Flowcus was a collaboration with three other students: David Leonard, Dongyuan Li, and Yikun Wang. As well as joint working on the design process, I was responsible for rapid physical prototyping and leading development of the electronics and code.