Year: 2011-2013
Client: Lucertis & Yulius
My role: Initiated the project as a Master’s Graduation Project and managed the implementation from the design and production side.   
Impact: Beat-it application in use at Yulius.

Beat-it began in 2011 aiming to change aggressive behavior and emotional well being for youngsters who are being treated at Ortho-psychiatric and Forensic youth psychiatry centers. Originally Beat-it derived from my Graduation project at the Delft University of Technology. After graduation, I pitched for funding to make implementation possible and helped Yulius with the final design and production. A successful pilot study followed and confirmed the benefit of Beat-it for youth with externalising aggressive behaviour.

Beat-it is a smart phone application, currently available on Android devices, that asks users to express their emotion through shaking with their phone. Based on the intensity of the shaking movement, Beat-it starts to play a song that matches the user’s arousal. The user has to reflect whether or not this song fits his emotion, if yes, he can start the game by moving his phone to his heart. He accepts the song and implicitly his emotion. 

The challenge of the game is to swing along with your phone on the beat. The game will distract and calm down the user. After the game, the user can save his score. 

Being calmed down, the user gets to hear his favorite song. On top of his favorite song he hears himself sharing 'helping thoughts' and insights concerning his emotion. 

Beat-it regulates emotions generated by the knowledge system through reappraisal, generates positive emotions through the body by game play & physical interaction and diminishes emotions generated by the attention system by distraction.
 
Beat-it proved to calm down users and to positively influence the emotion of users. Furthermore, the target group likes to use Beat-it.