Investigating the role of haptic stimulation in mobile meditation tools

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that mindfulness meditation and paced breathing are effective tools for stress management. There are a number of mobile applications currently available that are designed to guide the breath to support mindfulness meditation and paced breathing practices. However, these focus mainly on audio/visual cues and are mostly non-interactive. Our goal is to develop a mobile meditation tool focusing on haptic cues. To investigate the effectiveness of the system, we conducted user studies. This study explores the following questions: How effective is haptic guidance on its own? And how may the addition of haptic feedback enhance audio based guidance? Preliminary analysis support the value of haptic guidance in mobile meditation tools.