A dramatist. A movie nerd. A cat-person and iron solderer. A juggler and guitarist. A guinea pig lover. A fitness enthusiast and painter. A computer simulation creator. 

It doesn’t seem like these six people would have anything in common. But these are the hobbies and interests of the people who make up the EMVIO team. We decided to ask the EMVIO team members to tell us their experiences working on this two-year project.

Genuine Innovation

Generally, the most intriguing aspect of EMVIO was getting to the frontier of biotracking and measurement. The team had to “develop a non-contact method of measuring the pulse,” according to Lead Engineer Sergey Kostryukov. Anton Kiryuhin, one of our two Research Engineers, felt that developing EMVIO’s new method of measuring heart rate variability proved to be the most interesting aspect. 

Arina Simosheva, Research Engineer, took a broad perspective on EMVIO’s future impact. She said, “I think it’s so interesting to study the possibility of using this stress-measuring watch in related scientific fields, since these experiments can be performed in real time, with minimal influence on the experimental protocol.” 

In the end, CEO and EMVIO co-creator Valery Kuryshev sums up the team’s mission: “The most interesting thing about the EMVIO project is to be able to create an international solution and business that would be helpful to many people.”

Working on Stress is, well, Stressful

According to Valery, stress has always been one of his interests. “I have always wanted to study emotions and create a useful instrument for measuring them. When I learned from Alexei [Alpatov] that it was possible to reliably measure stress, I jumped at the chance. But like any start-up, “EMVIO from the beginning has been short on resources and long on problems.” 

The process of creating a working prototype was not without its difficulties. “The most difficult aspect of this project was actually creating the study/experimental protocol. How do you really test effectiveness?” said Lead Engineer Sergey. Research Engineer Anton agrees that the devil was in the details: “It was difficult to come up with a display that worked the way we wanted it to, that would also be appealing.” And Vladimir Zhuravlev, Senior Software Engineer, proposed that debugging EMVIO’s software was the most challenging aspect of this project. 

When it came to team dynamics, Alexei Alpatov, EMVIO co-creator and CTO, pointed out that it was sometimes difficult to find mutual agreements between colleagues, and Electronics Engineer Maria Ashapkina echoed these sentiments. “It was sometimes hard for us to experience the ups and downs in creating EMVIO,” she said, “because we had to deal with the chaos of our different perspectives and the massive amount of work we each took on.”

The EMVIO Team’s Stress Strategies

After studying the physiology and effects of stress, you can bet that EMVIO team members have their own personal stress hacks. For Alexei, a change in activity or enjoying pets (if you have them) can be a relaxing way to relieve stress. Vladimir’s favorite stress-busting activity is to watch a favorite movie before bed.

Both female team members Maria and Arina promote physical activity for stress management. “Set aside some free time for sports. For example, you could invest all your anger and negative emotions into aggressive volleyball, or take a quiet walk in the park for some fresh air to get your thoughts in order,” said Maria. Arina swears by one or even two hours of calisthenics when she feels stress coming on. 

For Sergey and Anton, changing one’s perspective is the key to stress relief. Sergey emphasized that concepts of stress are often very narrow, and you have to take a personal view of your own stress. Anton simply said, “You just have to look at the sky and smile.” 

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