Guided mindfulness when you need a break
The Breathing Box is the result from a group project from a course in Tangible Interaction. Its purpose is to motivate users to meditate and sustain a stressless lifestyle. It is a tool for reducing stress at the office, an environment where mental breaks are forgotten.
Illustrate problem. Stress in workplace. Uses phone during breaks which is just another screen input.
With stress is affecting people physically in mind, we developed the idea of a meditation and breathwork cube.
Natures way of calming our minds has inspired the user experience.
A warm crackling fire with flickering lights follows you through the meditation. The sensation of calm sea waves guide your breath work.
Prototyping ~ User testing
Tangible product serves as a physical reminder.
At last, a final prototype was composed. Inside the cube was room for an Arduino Uno board, batteries, an accelerometer to determine the cube's orientation, LED-strips, a vibrating motor, as well as filling objects to adjust the look of the lights and to keep elements in place.
The Breathing Box is presenting different programmes of breathing exercise or meditation on the different faces of the cube. By facing one of the sides upwards, the programme that face describes will be run.
For people who are not familiar to mindfullness practices it can be a big leap to try it out. There are apps which include guided meditations, but we see a need for using a tangible product as a nudge to lower the breach for trying it out. skriva om detta och lägga till illustration
In an office setting or working from home, it might be hard to differentiate breaks from work. Our aim is to draw the user from the screens in break time and use this time of 5-15 minutes to calm down through meditation or breathing. skriva om och illustration
