Eliciting Design Insights for Everyday Device Supporting Informal Mindfulness Practices
2023-2024 Personal Project (Still on-going)
As smart devices increasingly dominate our daily lives, our attention has become increasingly fragmented. While informal mindfulness practices offer a way to restore present-moment awareness naturally integrated into daily activities, most technological solutions, such as meditation apps, paradoxically contribute to smart device distractions. This creates a need to explore alternative approaches that support informal mindfulness practices without relying on screen-based interactions. In this project, I examined ways to harmonize technology with focused attention by reconsidering time's role in mindfulness through a series of participatory study sessions. The findings reveal time as a crucial element in mindfulness object design, with participants favoring ambient timing mechanisms over disruptive alerts and suggesting unobtrusive operation based on the nature of informal mindfulness activities.
Phase 1: Design Exploration with two initial prototypes
Phase 2: Participatory Workshop with experienced mindfulness practitioners
Phase 3: Participatory Prototype Building and Field Testing
Methods:
Research through Design;
Participatory Design;
In-the-field user test;
Skillset:
Arduino; Circuit design & sodering;
Modeling (Rhino, Solidworks);
Wood work; Sewing; 3D printing;
Phase One: Design Exploration
The fabrication process of the cup warmer
The cup warmer and the book reading light
Before the workshop, I created two sample artifacts based on my own mindful experience.
4 sessions of workshops with ten experienced mindfulness practitioners
one-month co-designing on selected concepts with the workshop participant
participant #1
participant #2
To be continued...