Hello everyone and welcome to this presentation on
exploring awareness of breathing through deep touch pressure.
My name is Annkatrin Jung and my co-authors are Miquel Alfaras,
Pavel Karpashevich, William Primett and Kristina Höök.
Our paper presents insights from a series of first-person material
explorations of deep pressure feedback coupled with breathing.
We used shape-changing elements that apply pressure to different locations of the torso,
leading us to explore new possibilities for interactions involving touch and breathing.
We uncovered potential for a number of novel aesthetic design qualities.
They explore the use of symmetry, different placements of pressure on the body,
and synchronicity with breathing, ultimately creating an intimate relationship between
the system and the user, which we call a breathing correspondence.
These qualities are not meant to provide universal design guidelines,
but rather to open up a novel design space around the use of shape-changing interfaces to spur
appreciation and awareness of breathing through the felt bodily experience of deep pressure.
The starting point in our design work was deep touch pressure which is used in therapy
to treat sensory processing difficulties and anxiety by applying firm pressure to the body.
We saw an opportunity to place shape-changing elements on
different body parts to achieve deep pressure.
We asked how shape-changing deep pressure can be coupled with breathing,
and how this might impact our subjective body experience and breathing awareness when combined
with a regular intentional breathing practice over a longer period of time.
To explore these questions, we engaged in different kinds of
embodied interactions with shape-changing pressure feedback and breathing exercises
following a soma-based autobiographical design approach.
We used a breathing sensor as well as inflatable pillows in
different shapes and sizes to provide shape-changing pressure on the body.
We also used the soma design method of defamiliarizing habitual movements,
making them strange, to deconstruct them and draw attention towards subtle sensations.
Through this explorative design process, we uncovered a number of
novel experiential qualities that bring out the aesthetic potential of our interactions.
Please see our paper for more examples and a deeper discussion on each of these four qualities.
The first quality relates to applying pressure equally on the left and right side of the torso
versus with different actuation patterns on either side of the torso. The symmetrical pressure helped
me to "feel more grounded in my body and my environment, more calm and centered than myself."
This is opposed to asymmetrical pressure which was often distracting or uncomfortable.
However it also helped us to become more aware of how we experienced a specific body part,
showing potential to deconstruct the experience and sharpen our bodily awareness.
The second quality emerged when we applied pressure to different
muscles and bone structures involved in breathing.
We found that it was able to support certain ways of
breathing by reinforcing the respective movements.
"I was experiencing my breathing more intensely throughout the day,
leading me to take deeper breaths than before and use my
stomach and chest more deliberately and distinctly while breathing."
These experiences suggest a potential for pressure feedback to stimulate engagement
with certain muscles and in this way support learning different breathing techniques.
The third quality relates to inflating and deflating the shape changing elements
in accordance with or out of sync with the user's breathing rhythm.
The synchronous feedback allowed me to "appreciate my body and its ability to breathe steadily.
I felt like the pads were in charge of my breathing
and I could let myself surrender my control over my breathing to them."
The asynchronous feedback often felt uncomfortable or unnatural
and challenged or even pressured us to breathe very deliberately, drawing our attention to the
mechanics of breathing and re-evaluating the pads' connection to our breathing.
This shows a potential for asynchronous breathing feedback to create deeper forms of interaction
by disrupting the habitual way of breathing.
The last quality explores the balance point
between the system leading or following the user's breathing,
guiding them to take deeper breaths while reflecting the changes in their breathing rhythm.
Over time, a dialogue emerged between the user and the system.
"The pressure served as a constant reminder to attend to my breath.
It allowed me to become more aware
of unintentional changes and try to make sense of them."
This suggests how the boundaries between the user and the system can dissolve to
create a more evocative communication, in short - a breathing correspondence.
In summary, our paper describes our accounts of a
first-person engagement with deep pressure and breathing.
We suggest how pressure-based feedback can be used to cultivate breathing awareness,
appreciation, controllability and deconstruction.
By invoking unusual and uncomfortable experiences, we can stimulate new perspectives,
ultimately leading to an intimate breathing correspondence between the system and the user.
We hope that our work can inspire the CHI community by suggesting new paths for further
research on designing pressure-based interactions to cultivate a richer breathing experience.
I would like to thank my co-authors, everyone who helped or participated in our design work,
and everyone involved in the CHI submission process.
Thank you for your time!