Development, Deployment, and Evaluation of DyMand -- An Open-Source Smartwatch and Smartphone System for Capturing Couples' Dyadic Interactions in Chronic Disease Management in Daily Life

Abstract

Dyadic interactions of couples are of interest as they provide insight into relationship quality and chronic disease management. Currently, ambulatory assessment of couples' interactions entails collecting data at random or scheduled times which could miss significant couples' interaction/conversation moments. In this work, we developed, deployed and evaluated DyMand, a novel open-source smartwatch and smartphone system for collecting self-report and sensor data from couples based on partners' interaction moments. Our smartwatch-based algorithm uses the Bluetooth signal strength between two smartwatches each worn by one partner, and a voice activity detection machine-learning algorithm to infer that the partners are interacting, and then to trigger data collection. We deployed the DyMand system in a 7-day field study and collected data about social support, emotional well-being, and health behavior from 13 (N=26) Swiss-based heterosexual couples managing diabetes mellitus type 2 of one partner. Our system triggered 99.1% of the expected number of sensor and self-report data when the app was running, and 77.6% of algorithm-triggered recordings contained partners' conversation moments compared to 43.8% for scheduled triggers. The usability evaluation showed that DyMand was easy to use. DyMand can be used by social, clinical, or health psychology researchers to understand the social dynamics of couples in everyday life, and for developing and delivering behavioral interventions for couples who are managing chronic diseases.