BRelief

BReilef is a multi-functional bracelet for the treatment of a behavioral disorder called body-focused repetitive behaviors (BFRBs). It can notify the patients’ BFRBs behaviors, record their BFRBs status through their actions, and ease their extreme emotions, which is the cause of the disorder.

Problem

What is Body-focused repetitive behavior (BFRBs)?

BFRBs are specific types of disorder in which the patient is impulsive to do repetitive self-harm behavior when they are experiencing mood swings. The patient usually cannot control their particular behavior.

Patients always suffer from daily consistent physical harm in the long term, always associated with mental illness.
‍BFRBs have always been misunderstood as "bad habits".Therefore, they didn’t have comprehensive research until the recent decade. In 2022, the US National Library of Medicine classified BFRBs, under obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCRD).

User Research

Our research focuses on the causes and triggers of BFRBs. Through tracing the origin, we try to find a long-term solution for helping patients relieve their symptoms.

Mental Regulation DifficultyCompared to normal people, BFRBs patients may have difficulty in regulating intense emotions such as anxiety and embarrassment. In other words, the patients will perform repetitive behaviors to relieve the uncontrollable pressure.

BFRBs Are Proportional to StressThe repetitive self-harming behaviors can help patients digest unmanageable extreme emotions, such as pulling hair, biting nails, picking skin, and so on, without feeling pain.

As time passes by, patients will become addicted to this action. Even when they don’t feel any pressure, they will do this unconsciously.

Define

Mission
An affordable, effective, and long-term prevention of repetitive harmful behaviors for BFRBs patients

Goals

Prevent BFRBs from happening.
Find alternative solutions for stress relief.
Encouraging patients to get rid of BFRBs in the long term.

Ideation

Solution
A therapeutic wearable technology with fidget components that can help patients relieve stress and alert function to prevent BFRBs actions.

Features

Alert when BFRBs onset, but won't disturb users' daily lives.
Fidget tools nearby users for their stress relief.
Data visualized report for BFRBs control progress tracing.

Product Design

Based on these features, we developed BRelief, a therapeutic bracelet that is fashionable enough for patients to wear daily.

Through mild vibrate alerts and customized fidget components, it highly prevents users from doing harmful repetitive behaviors. The records and daily reports show users their BFRBs data based on the timestamp.