Investigation of the Oura Ring’s consumer stress tracking and management functionality
Internship assignment description:
Daily life stress is important to measure, since stress is said to contribute to the degradation of both physical and psychological health. Wearable devices make such measurement possible, with many of them introducing stress tracking, triggering, and stress management techniques. In this internship assignment, you will work with researchers from the Stress in Action consortium (stress-in-action.nl) and will explore the stress functionality as offered by the Oura Ring. Your task will be to first familiarize yourself with the ring and its companion application, explore the stress tracking functions while focusing on potentially available in-app interventions and triggering functionalities. You will also explore the options for self-tracking, both in the Oura Ring app, and in other software. You will then systematically document this functionality, test the device on yourself and take a structured look at the data. An example of this N=1 study would be to look into the alignment of produced stress scores with your subjective assessments. You will also potentially assist in an ongoing work with other wearable devices. The output of your internship will hence be a report including a manual of the Oura’s stress tracking capabilities, the N=1 study design, and its results.
Supervisor: Magdalena Sikora