Bubble breather - A breathing exercise game to support pneumonia rehabilitation and recovery

Abstract

Breathing exercise games are designed to increase motivation and adherence during the rehabilitation of respiratory conditions such as pneumonia. However, current breathing exercise game designs rely upon custom built and/or non-commodity hardware that can be relatively expensive, require regular upkeep, and are complex. Together the issues associated with the breath sensing technology in many current breathing games act as a barrier to their accessibility and design. To address these limitations, we designed and built Bubble Breather, a game that uses the microphone and speakers available in commodity devices (e.g., phones and laptops) to sense breathing using ultrasound. Bubble Breather was designed specifically to use this newer type of breath sensing in two commonly prescribed breathing exercises for pneumonia: Breath Stacking and Positive Expiratory Pressure (PEP) Therapy. We present the design and implementation of Bubble Breather, and describe our future work to iteratively extend and improve the game through co-design sessions with clinicians and patients.