Lotus: Mediating Mindful Breathing

Chinareva, Sibela; Jones, J. Leighton; Tumia, Nuha; Kumpik, Dan; Shah, P.; Everitt, Aluna

doi:10.1145/3334480.3382938

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(1 reference statement)

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“…Many alternative interfaces and devices have been designed [63]. For example, Lotus [64] is an actuated origami flower with petals that open and close in response to your heart-rate to guide your breathing. ChillFish [65] and DEEP [66] are breath-controlled biofeedback games that uses gamification of biofeedback to help engage children in mindful breathing.…”

Section: Mindful Breathing Interfacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A calming hug: Design and validation of a tactile aid to ease anxiety

Haynes

Lywood²,

Crowe

et al. 2022

PLoS ONE

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Anxiety disorders affect approximately one third of people during their lifetimes and are the ninth leading cause of global disability. Current treatments focus on therapy and pharmacological interventions. However, therapy is costly and pharmacological interventions often have undesirable side-effects. Healthy people also regularly suffer periods of anxiety. Therefore, a non-pharmacological, intuitive, home intervention would be complementary to other treatments and beneficial for non-clinical groups. Existing at-home anxiety aids, such as guided meditations, typically employ visual and/or audio stimuli to guide the user into a calmer state. However, the tactile sense has the potential to be a more natural modality to target in an anxiety-calming device. The tactile domain is relatively under-explored, but we suggest that there are manifold physiological and affective qualities of touch that lend it to the task. In this study we demonstrate that haptic technology can offer an enjoyable, effective and widely accessible alternative for easing state anxiety. We describe a novel huggable haptic interface that pneumatically simulates slow breathing. We discuss the development of this interface through a focus group evaluating five prototypes with embedded behaviours (‘breathing’, ‘purring’, ‘heartbeat’ and ‘illumination’). Ratings indicated that the ‘breathing’ prototype was most pleasant to interact with and participants described this prototype as ‘calming’ and ‘soothing’, reminding them of a person breathing. This prototype was developed into an ergonomic huggable cushion containing a pneumatic chamber powered by an external pump allowing the cushion to ‘breathe’. A mixed-design experiment (n = 129) inducing anxiety through a group mathematics test found that the device was effective at reducing pre-test anxiety compared to a control (no intervention) condition and that this reduction in anxiety was indistinguishable from that of a guided meditation. Our findings highlight the efficacy of this interface, demonstrating that haptic technologies can be effective at easing anxiety. We suggest that the field should be explored in more depth to capture the nuances of different modalities in relation to specific situations and trait characteristics.

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Section: Mindful Breathing Interfacesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A calming hug: Design and validation of a tactile aid to ease anxiety

Haynes

Lywood²,

Crowe

et al. 2022

PLoS ONE

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Users tell us aSpire's nudges feel more natural and do not require attention, while Apple watch with Breathe App. [17], devices [10,37] and meditation apps ask you to focus on their cues [23] or require a dedicated silent space to help users focus [11]. Watch-type wearable devices [2,11,13] are mobile but all of them were tested for regulating heart rate in-lab environment.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%