Towards a wearable system for assessing couples' dyadic interactions in daily life

Researchers are interested in understanding the dyadic interactions of couples as they relate to relationship quality and chronic disease management. Currently, ambulatory assessment of couples' interactions entail collecting data at random times in the day. There is no ubiquitous system that leverages the dyadic nature of couples' interactions (eg. collecting data when partners are interacting) and also performs real-time inference relevant for relationship quality and chronic disease management. In this work, we seek to develop a smartwatch system that can collect data about couples' dyadic interactions, and infer and track indicators of relationship quality and chronic disease management. We plan to collect data from couples in the field and use the data to develop methods to detect the indicators. Then, we plan to implement these methods as a smartwatch system and evaluate its performance in real-time and everyday life through another field study. Such a system can be used by social psychology researchers to understand the social dynamics of couples in everyday life and their impact on relationship quality, and also by health psychology researchers for developing and delivering behavioral interventions for couples who are managing chronic diseases.