My extended crummy trial has finally come to an end, and the results are very interesting (see slides below).

For the duration of my trial, I tried to get people to perform a simple calming mechanism every day. The simplest calming mechanism I could come up with was smiling. In order to encourage people to smile as well as be able to track the progress of the pilot, I requested that people send me a daily picture of themselves smiling. The simple request to smile didn't seem like a strong enough trigger to me. In order to increase motivation, I changed the process from a simple alert to a transaction; I daily sent each participant a picture of myself smiling, asking for one from them in return.

There were quite a few surprises that arose from this pilot. Most notably, in spite of all the photo/social circle sharing apps available (i.e. Facebook, Path, Color, Instagram, etc.) participants reported that MMS-felt like the best option because of ease and convenience^[1]. I had initially intended for people to reap the benefits of smiling themselves, but many reported that getting pictures of me smiling was as effective or more effective than smiling themselves.

Going forward, I'd like to find some way to automate this process, and perhaps ease myself out of the dynamic so that the transaction doesn't necessitate me being involved; although this would probably entail inserting another trigger somewhere.