NEMA+ (Smartwatch EMA)

Project Objectives

Understanding how people experience listening and communication in everyday life is important for hearing research. NAL’s existing NEMA smartphone app allows people to answer short questions about their hearing experience during their daily activities, but repeatedly taking out a phone can be disruptive and may discourage high response rates.

This project explored whether a smartwatch could make this process easier and less intrusive. The aim was to develop a smartwatch-based version of NEMA (NEMA+) that allows people to provide quick responses directly on their watch. An additional goal was to capture additional information – such as their heart rate and activity throughout the day – to better understand the context in which listening experiences occur.

Key Findings

The project demonstrated that smartwatch EMA can support brief, in-the-moment reporting of listening and communication experiences in everyday life. Using a watch to log responses could be quick and discreet, without interrupting the current activity.

The work also showed that background information obtained by sensors – such as movement, heart rate, and ambient sound levels – can be collected to add useful context to reported listening experiences.

As a development project, and through subsequent use in a research study, this work identified areas for refinement to improve usability and reliability. These learnings are guiding ongoing improvements and informing future research applications.

Next Steps and Potential Applications

This work shows that smartwatches can complement smartphone approaches and support hearing research with less disruption to everyday life. NEMA+ provides a foundation for future studies that aim to capture real-world listening experiences alongside physiological and activity data. Future work will focus on improving background data handling, refining data analysis approaches, and further integrating wearables into hearing research. Overall, the project supports the development of real-world tools to better understand communication challenges in daily life.