GoalCraft Mindful Wine Tasting

GoalCraft, Cavan Chan, Life Coach

Nov. 2022

Sip, Sense, & Understand: Tracking Emotions During Mindful Wine Tasting

​Nature of Event:	Event
Products Used:	Upmood Mass, Upmood Insight
Metrics Collected:	Mood, Stress level, HRV

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Introduction

GoalCraft, led by life coach Cavan Chan, specializes in creating unique experiences that blend personal development with engaging activities. In November 2022, GoalCraft hosted a "Mindful Wine Tasting" workshop. The primary goal of this research was to capture a benchmark of emotions experienced by participants during a wine tasting session. Furthermore, the project aimed to explore how emotion tracking could provide insights into beverage enjoyment and alcohol consumption. Emotion monitoring was critical for this project to objectively quantify the subtle emotional shifts and overall enjoyment levels during different phases of the mindful tasting experience, moving beyond subjective feedback alone.

The Emotional Journey of Mindful Wine Tasting

The "Mindful Wine Tasting" workshop was structured into two distinct parts. The initial segment involved an introduction to wine, discussions on stress levels, and health benefits, delivered in a brightly lit room with a "lecture style" approach. During this phase, participants wore Upmood bands to continuously track their real-time emotional responses. The second part transitioned into the core sensory meditation of drinking wine: lights were dimmed, music began to play, and the instructor guided participants with a soothing voice. Upmood's technology continued to monitor emotions throughout this entire process, capturing the emotional journey as participants moved from an informative setting to a deeply immersive sensory experience.

Why Upmood?

Upmood's real-time emotion monitoring capabilities were indispensable for the GoalCraft Mindful Wine Tasting project. The ability to objectively track participants' emotional states, including stress and valence levels, as they transitioned between different environmental and experiential conditions, provided invaluable insights. Upmood Mass allowed for seamless group monitoring, while Upmood Insight delivered the granular data necessary to correlate specific moments, such as environmental changes, with immediate emotional shifts. This enabled GoalCraft to establish emotional benchmarks and understand how subtle cues influenced enjoyment and relaxation during the wine tasting.

Key Outcomes and Findings

The mindful wine tasting workshop yielded significant insights into the emotional journey of participants:

• 😟Initial Discomfort/Challenge: During the first half of the event, as participants were settling in or receiving information in a brightly lit, lecture-style room, 66% of people experienced negative emotions, and 33% reported high stress levels.

• 😌Transformative Shift to Calmness: Once the wine tasting began, with dimmed lights, soothing music, and a calming vocal guide, there was a dramatic emotional shift. All 11 participants (100%) reported feeling calm or positive emotions.

• 🪴Environmental Impact: This outcome strongly indicated that environmental changes and a carefully curated user experience can significantly trigger calmness and positive emotional responses.

  
  

These initial research results are subject to further testing and investigation, but provide a compelling benchmark for understanding enjoyment and emotional responses to beverages.

Conclusion

The collaboration with GoalCraft and Cavan Chan successfully demonstrated the profound impact of environmental and experiential factors on emotional states during a mindful activity. By leveraging Upmood's emotion monitoring technology, GoalCraft was able to objectively quantify the shift from initial discomfort to widespread calmness and enjoyment, providing a clear benchmark for future mindful experiences. This project highlights Upmood's potential to offer deep insights into user experience and enjoyment, not just in wellness, but also in consumer behavior related to beverages and other sensory engagements.

Thank you to GoalCraft and Cavan Chan for their innovative approach and support in this research.

If you are interested in holding your own emotion-driven research or trying out Upmood products, please send us an email at support@upmood.com!