Visualised breathing in AR

Backstory, in case you have time

During the pandemic I had enough time to think. And all this thinking was happening in a garden in small town called Ferozepur. Me and my family had to shift there just at the onset of Corona era and what a blessing it was. From living in an apartment on 8th floor surrounded by more apartments, we were put in a house with a garden where we would grow our own vegetables later. We were also frequently visited by cats, dogs and cows. Everything went all naturale. And this is when, me, surrounded by nature, started looking at my own nature. I started to get fascinated by sleep, dreams, nature of consciousness, meditation, yoga.

Fast forward around 2 years, I got enrolled in a masters program at IIT Delhi and got the opportunity to continue to study and apply some of these interest areas into real projects.

For my summer internship, I worked with Dr Jyoti Kumar at the UX Lab IIT Delhi, to make an AR application for open eye guided Chakra meditation. In my 3rd semester I took up an elective course ‘Prototyping in IoT’ by Prof Jay Dhariwal, Dept of Design IIT Delhi, where I got a chance to extend my fascination with meditation through sensors and Arduino. I proposed syncing a LED to the movement of diaphragm to visualise breathing in physical space.

And with this independent side project I am trying to visualise breathing in AR, while also aiming to collect some data this time.

Proposal I made for the concept of visualised breathing

Breathing - Literature Review

• Fincham, G. W., Strauss, C., Montero-Marin, J., & Cavanagh, K. (2023). Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials. Scientific Reports, 13(1), 432
  • Indeed, some government public health platforms already recommend deep breathing for stress, anxiety and panic symptoms (NHS and IAPT, UK)
  • Modifying breathing alters communication sent from the respiratory system, rapidly influencing brain regions regulating behaviour, thought and emotion. Likewise, respiration may entrain brain electrical activity, with slow breathing resulting in synchrony of brain waves, thereby enabling diverse brain regions to communicate more effectively. It has been observed that adept long-term Buddhist meditation practitioners can achieve states where brain waves are synchronised continuously.

• Balban, Melis Yilmaz, Eric Neri, Manuela M. Kogon, Lara Weed, Bita Nouriani, Booil Jo, Gary Holl, Jamie M. Zeitzer, David Spiegel, and Andrew D. Huberman, A. D. (2023). Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal. Cell Reports Medicine, 100895

  The primary endpoints are improvement in mood and anxiety as well as reduced physiological arousal (respiratory rate, heart rate, and heart rate variability).

  • Daily 5-minute breathwork and mindfulness meditation improve mood and reduce anxiety
  • Breathwork improves mood and physiological arousal more than mindfulness meditation
  • Cyclic sighing is most effective at improving mood and reducing respiratory rate

Existing apps

Using habit stacking

As a designer, I am always looking for creative ways to encourage users to adopt new behaviours that can improve their well-being. For this use case, my focus was on breathing techniques to reduce anxiety and increase mental well being.

A lot of people today are addicted to their screens - whether it's their smartphones, laptops, or tablets. With infinite scrolls on social media apps, a lot of users use this dopamine route to either curb their anxieties or escape from reality. While this addiction can be harmful in many ways, it also presents an opportunity to introduce users to the benefits of mindfulness and meditation.

However, getting people to actually engage in mindfulness and meditation can be challenging, especially if they are not already inclined to do so.

One potential solution is to leverage existing behaviours that people are already engaged in, and use those behaviours as a "lever" to encourage the adoption of new behaviours.

It’s called habit stacking and I felt that it might be used in digital space too. In this technique, a new habit is attached to an existing habit that is already a part of a person's routine. This can help to make the new habit more automatic and easier to sustain.

The Idea

Addiction to screens can be used as a lever to introduce a new behaviour of being aware of the present moment.

A mindfulness app could be designed to be used on a mobile screen, leveraging the user's addiction to screens as a means of encouraging them to practice mindfulness.

Over time, the user could develop a habit of taking mindful breaks whenever they feel their screen consumption is making them anxious/stressed.

Why in AR ?

A live AR stream of one self acts like a mirror with augmented objects/features on it. This can allow me as a designer to play around with how the user see’s herself during the breathing session.
Visualising a breathing pattern can
guide the user to a better breathing session. Displaying other feedback information like current heart rate can further encourage the user to continue the session until satisfied.

Such sessions can also be logged and displayed in dashboards which can help the user track their progress and see trends in their heart rates and mood logs.

There is some research that suggests that visualising breathing in augmented reality can help users with their breathing and overall well-being. A study published in 2021, involved 40 participants who were randomly assigned to one of two groups: an AR group and a control group. The AR group was provided with an augmented reality meditation app that included visual and auditory cues to guide their meditation practice. The control group used a traditional meditation app without any augmented reality features.

The results of the study showed that the AR group had significantly greater reductions in stress and anxiety compared to the control group. Additionally, the AR group showed increased activity in brain regions associated with relaxation and decreased activity in regions associated with stress.

Study mentioned :
Viczko, J., Tarrant, J., & Jackson, R. (2021). Effects on Mood and EEG States After Meditation in Augmented Reality With and Without Adjunctive Neurofeedback. Frontiers in Virtual Reality, 2, 618381

Idea prototype

Music used - Jul by Scott Buckley