Designing breathing exercise technologies for health and wellness

Abstract

This doctoral research identifies design guidelines that can improve breathing exercise technologies – guidance and feedback systems that support breathing exercises. Specifically, the research demonstrates that two commonly employed Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design approaches for increasing user engagement (i.e., serious games) and decreasing attentional demand (i.e., peripheral information systems) can be used to promote breathing exercise technologies in a way that preserves exercise integrity and benefit. This is important because breathing exercises have a wide range of health and wellness benefits, and our designs may allow these benefits to be attained more fully and by a wider audience. Further, the research also contributes novel design artifacts and insights that will support the ongoing exploration of breathing exercise technologies. The findings may generalize to other design-focused research applications such as interventions for health and wellness, serious games for rehabilitation, and peripheral and ambient information systems.