The Quarantine Diary Study
We followed the lives of 100+ people in quarantine for 10 days to better understand the psychological challenges astronauts will face in deep space
Hello, Talosians! Welcome to the special diary study edition of our blog! This blog post is all about the 10 day quarantine diary study we conducted at the end of last semester, including our goals, methods, and results.
Maybe you were looking for the “what have we been up to since summer break?” edition, or the “what is this blog, anyway?” edition. If so, check those out and then come back.
The Answers to the Questions You Have, Probably
Why?
The first phase of the design thinking framework is empathy. Empathy is probably a lot easier when you’re studying grocery shopping or something — we wanted to empathize with astronauts on long-duration missions in deep space cramped together in a tiny vehicle.
Unfortunately NASA is not willing to send five grad students to the International Space Station. In fact it’s really hard to even get ahold of astronauts to talk to.
Who are you people?
We are five Master of Human-Computer Interaction students at Carnegie Mellon University. We are working on a capstone project sponsored by NASA Ames Research Center. We aim to empower astronauts to diagnose problems independently from Mission Control in preparation for long-duration missions to the Moon and Mars.
Is sitting on your couch eating fist-fulls of Doritos and playing Animal Crossing really comparable to traveling to Mars?
Well, kinda. One thing we have in common with astronauts right now is that we are in a very high stress situation with a lot of unknowns. What is going to happen to the economy? When will the pandemic be over? We have a lot of time to think about it, and nowhere to go. Many of us are separated from our family and friends.
About the Study
Halfway through our Spring 2020 semester, we were shocked to learn that we wouldn’t be coming back to CMU after spring break due to the COVID-19 crisis. Meanwhile, around the world thousands of people were already in lockdown (and many more would be in the coming weeks).
At the same time, we were reaching a point of convergence in our capstone project: we had narrowed our problem space to critical thinking for diagnosis. We wanted to know more about what it’s really like to try solve problems in space while you’re exhausted, stressed, and missing your loved ones.
We decided to make the most of the quarantine situation with a 10-day diary study. Going in, we asked ourselves:
What are the biggest psychological risks for astronauts in isolation?
What are the pain points of deep space travel?
What helps people in isolation feel better?
How does isolation affect their goals and productivity?
How does isolation affect critical thinking?
Recruiting Participants
With the hope of reaching a diverse audience, we promoted the study on multiple social media platforms, including all of the major coronavirus subreddits.
We were thrilled with the amount of responses we got, and how generally supportive people were of our study!
Getting to Know the Participants
We ran the study using Google Forms to collect data each day.
- Of the 228 people who responded to our initial survey, about 130 qualified for the study (they were 18+ and reported that they had been in quarantine for some time.)
- Of those 130 people, 105 people participated in one or more days of diary entries (plus the initial recruiting survey) AND were willing to let us publish their data for this article.
- Of those 105 people, 48 completed all 11 surveys. Not bad! 🙌
Now is a good time to mention that we actually have no idea who these people are. A key component of the study was that it was 100% anonymous. This became important later because it seemingly made people very comfortable sharing intimate details of their lives with us.
Below is the demographic data that our 105 participants self-reported:
Getting to Know the Data
The initial recruiting survey was focused on demographics, and also asked some basic questions about people’s experience in quarantine so far.
For each of the following days of the diary study, we asked the same base questions:
- How many days have you been in quarantine as of today?
- How are you feeling overall?
- How happy are you feeling today? (Scale of 1–10)
- How hopeful are you about the future as of right now? (Scale of 1–10)
- How motivated are you feeling today? (Scale of 1–10)
- What did you do today? (An overview of a few sentences is fine)
- What was the best part of your day?
- What was the worst part of your day?
- Is there anything else you want to tell us?
Each day we also added one or two bonus questions:
- Day 5: In the time that you have been quarantined, have you had to do any sort of work yourself that you normally would have hired someone else to do? Can you tell us about that experience?
- Day 8: What do you miss most about “regular life” (before quarantine)?
Exploratory Data Analysis
Right off the bat, we did some exploratory data analysis on the quantitative metrics and noticed some interesting (but not necessarily useful in terms of our goals of understanding astronauts) trends.
- Unemployed participants consistently reported the highest happiness, optimism, and ambition levels.
- Student participants consistently reported the lowest happiness, optimism, and ambition levels.
- Whereas participation from unemployed and student participants was steady, participation from employed participants gradually declined over the course of the study.
- People who did not complete all days of the diary study generally reported higher ambition levels than those who had 100% completion. 😏
Qualitative Data Analysis
Given our need for empathy, we decided to take a manual approach to the qualitative analysis of the free-text responses. We manually read hundreds of responses, pulling notes that struck us as particularly pertinent to spaceflight.
After hours and hours of reading responses, we were feeling a little closer to our goal of better understanding crew members in isolation.
Each day we asked participants about the best part and the worst part of their day. The responses to these fields were particularly interesting. We were surprised at how much overlap we found between the two!
- Events related to work and food were frequent flyers for both the “best” and “worst” part of the day, sometimes even in the same day.
- People have lots of coping mechanisms that make them feel better, at least in the short term: videogames, exercise, walks, videochatting friends, and even household chores.
Insight #1
Food is often the high or low point of the day.
Food is a big deal. Many participants framed their daily narratives around food; a sort of “food log”, if you will. For (a made up) example:
“Woke up, had coffee on the porch. Had lunch with my mom over Zoom. Made pizza for dinner which was fun but I made a mess in the kitchen. Then my husband and I had some wine and watched a movie.”
“I definitely felt more ill at ease today than yesterday. I’m not sure why, but I feel as if having worse food options (yesterday I had my frozen stuffed pasta) and seeing my food supplies dwindling was part of it.”
Food may seem like a small thing to focus on when it comes to spaceflight, but our background research supported the idea that food is and has always been a big deal for astronauts.
On the International Space Station, astronauts often eat dinner communally, and exchange “bonus food” provided by each nation’s space agencies for special occasions. (Fun fact: only the Russian quarters have a table, making it the go-to gathering place.)
We concluded that food has a significant impact on morale. We were thrilled to have this observation confirmed by an Astronaut we were lucky enough to interview!
“The finding that food affects morale — that’s something you can hang your hat on. You hit the nail on the head with that.”
— American Astronaut, Class of 2013
Insight #2
The days blend together. (Day of week, special days, season change)
A common theme in the diary entries was the pain point of time feeling meaningless. This can be especially painful on special days associated with memories with loved ones, such as holidays or anniversaries. There is no doubt that this is also a pain point for crew members.
Many people reported anxiety around the great unknown of how long quarantine would last.
“The realization that there isn’t a fixed end date for this isolation. If we knew that it would be back to normal in X weeks, that at least would give us something to look forward to.”
While astronauts have known timelines for missions, they constantly face the unknown. Space travel is by nature full of risk and uncertainty. Without constant communication with Mission Control, crew members traveling to Mars will be forced to assess risk and make decisions more independently.
Insight #3
People enjoy the diary study. It gives them routine, purpose, and support.
Perhaps our most surprising finding was how much people enjoyed keeping a diary, and knowing that someone was reading it. The aspect of anonymity seemed to encourage people to be open and honest — there was even a good amount of old fashioned venting.
“Today was very hard — the weight of the world feels heavy on our hearts. I don’t journal often, but even taking part in this diary study feels cathartic and meaningful, so thank you.”
We concluded that keeping a diary actually helped people in isolation cope with the pain points identified in Insight #2: dealing with uncertainty and feeling that the passing of time is meaningless.
“I’m not sure about the specific data you are looking for but typing this out for some unknown person to read is really helping me cope. Thank you! stay safe =] ”
Could a structured diary be a helpful tool for astronauts on the long-duration mission to Mars?
Thank you to our participants!
Each of the data points we shared in this article represent a real human who was kind enough to give us 10 days of their time. We can’t express enough how grateful we are that you were willing to share your thoughts and feelings with us. We loved reading your entries, and they helped us pass the time and find meaning in our own quarantine lives.
About Us
We are a team of 5 Master of Human-Computer Interaction students at Carnegie Mellon University. We will be completing our 9 month capstone project and graduating in August 2020.
Our client is the NASA Ames Research Center, where we are very fortunate to work with UX Designers Joe Medwid and Isabel Torren.
You can learn more about project by visiting our team website, or reading our blog!
