The SLICE (Simulated Location-based Identification of Compulsive Events) study was a semi-controlled feasibility study investigating the potential of wearable devices and indoor localization to detect routine and repetitive activity patterns. The study consisted of a one-hour session in which participants engaged in both naturalistic and protocol-driven activities within a semi-controlled multi room residential lab environment. It was approved by the ethics commission of the University of Potsdam (Approval No.: 38/2022).
The feasibility study was conducted at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany, and was designed to replicate everyday living conditions. The environment consisted of a kitchen, bathroom, main room, and hallways, and was designed to support the collection of high-resolution, multimodal sensor data.
The main session lasted approximately one hour, with the total time commitment per participant (including setup and debriefing) being around two hours. During the one-hour recording, participants were left alone in the residential lab to minimize the Hawthorne effect and to create a realistic everyday setting. They were instructed to engage in natural activities such as reading, preparing food, or working on a laptop, thereby generating baseline or NULL data. At the same time, they were asked to perform a specified number of simulated compulsive-like activities, namely handwashing, table cleaning, and door checking, at self-chosen times during the session. Each behavior was performed in two distinct ways to represent routine and compulsive-like patterns.
