Emily Chee

DH 199 : Embodied Cognition

20 October 2020

Embodied Mindfulness Design - Annotated Bibliography

Alli, Elizabeth. “Mindful Design and Interaction.” ​Medium​, UX Collective, 8 May 2019,
uxdesign.cc/mindful-design-and-interaction-b5c96d968a2b.

https://uxdesign.cc/mindful-design-and-interaction-b5c96d968a2b

Mindfulness, simply put, is paying attention on purpose to what’s happening inside and
around us in the present moment, without labeling or judging what we observe.​ While the
act of mindfulness is quite simple (turning your attention to the little details), it’s the
intention that can take some practice (doing so without judging, naming, rejecting or
clinging).

Mindfulness is what happens when we combine the act of attention with the quality of
intention.

The act of designing something can be a mindful practice by turning our attention to the
minute details and sensations of what is happening in the present moment. ​The feeling of
the pen in our hand, the sound of the pencil against the paper, the sound of the mouse, the
clicking of the keys as you type.

Takeaway:
Mindfulness is not meditation. Mindfulness is being able to be present in the moment and
focus on what is happening with a clear mind. Mindfulness is connected to our five
senses and requires attention to each one.
 Basnet, Siddant. “Headspace & How to Design a Mindfulness Product.” ​Medium​, UX
Collective, 24 Sept. 2020,
uxdesign.cc/headspace-how-to-design-a-mindfulness-product-2bfb38885e9b?gi=9295aaf2
a8e7.

https://uxdesign.cc/headspace-how-to-design-a-mindfulness-product-2bfb38885e9b

Data-driven Product: ​Better data & feedback collection will allow a deeper insight into
people’s meditating habits and performance at scale. ​Metrics like retention can hint at
how well Headspace is performing but the actual personal impact cannot be estimated off
of it. However, with more data collection, more privacy and ethical issues arise.
Currently, the service shares some user data with giants like Facebook and Google for
ads.

Product Identity: A somewhat existential question Headspace must ask itself is about its
identity: of the swathes of people that we introduce meditation to, ultimately, whose
guide do we want to be and for what stages in their practice. ​Maybe another
crowd-shared or discussion-based product works much better for a segment. ​Maybe the
product currently just can’t provide enough for more mature users. How much should
Headspace change itself to accommodate newer discoveries about its users? Should it
lose simplicity to fulfill the varied needs of a larger audience? Such questions ultimately
reduce to a compromise between the mission of the company and the survival of the
company.

Integration of Theory:​ Anecdotally speaking, I’ve found that reading Buddhist or

meditation theory in tandem with practice brings about much better results in achieving
mindfulness. Currently, the theory provided is narrated at the beginning and end of the
exercises but this might not be enough for people seeking more avenues to learn
meditation. After some digging, I recently discovered that Andy has ​written a book​ which
goes really well with the app; however, most users don’t seem to know it even exists.

Profile Control & Usage: ​The profile management system has heavily relied on Facebook
(or Spotify) if users registered through the service for a long time now. Another tricky
area of interest should be account sharing, ​especially among millennials​, which is one
even major companies like Netflix struggle to deal with.

Takeaway:
Basnet analyzed Headspace, a mindfulness app based on meditation. He brought into
light a few key features of the app including the 10-day onboarding, audio-focused
animations, and personalized flexibility for users like him. Basnet recognized
immediately the importance of building a habit for mindfulness just by using the app
constantly everyday for at least 10 minutes. However, he did suggest more data-driven
information and progress tracker features that would help enhance his experience with the
app. Overall, Basnet was satisfied, but wanted more engagement whether it be through a
profile, or a community.
 Dunn, Beth. “The Five Senses of UX.” ​Medium,​ HubSpot Product, 22 Nov. 2019,
medium.com/hubspot-product/the-five-senses-of-ux-447968f62760.

https://medium.com/hubspot-product/the-five-senses-of-ux-447968f62760

If there’s a question we’d like to pursue about a naming convention, mental model,
metaphor, or a semantic shift in the air, it might be a content designer leading the charge.
Or maybe we’re interested in learning more about task completion, ease of discovery, or
something else. ​Whatever it is, we’re tuning in and doing our best to listen more than we
talk.

One of our favorite tools for finding out how our customers feel is an ​empathy session​.
This is a fairly informal session where we try to complete a task or a flow as if we were a
certain customer at a certain level of familiarity with the tool. It’s not an exact science,
but let’s just say that we never walk out of the room with nothing on our list of things to
improve.

Is the content and design accessible to all? ​How readable is the text? What if you’re a
non-native English speaker? If you have cognitive trouble? What if you’re distracted,
multitasking, grieving, or stressed? What if you’re using a screen reader or you’re color
blind? Are the visual metaphors in our illustrations inclusive of different genders,
cultures, identities, lived experiences? Does everyone “get it?” Who might feel left out?

Takeaway:
We can use our five senses to be present and design for our users. It is important to have
empathy and recognize all the pain points a user may have while using a product. These
advice and techniques can transfer to mindfulness as using the five senses to be present
and more aware of our surroundings can be implemented to a better experience.
 Huberty, Jennifer, et al. “Efficacy of the Mindfulness Meditation Mobile App ‘Calm’ to
Reduce Stress Among College Students: Randomized Controlled Trial.” ​JMIR MHealth
and UHealth,​ vol. 7, no. 6, 2019, doi:10.2196/14273.

https://mhealth.jmir.org/2019/6/e14273/

Calm is an effective modality to deliver mindfulness meditation in order to reduce stress

and improve mindfulness and self-compassion in stressed college students​. Our findings
provide important information that can be applied to the design of future studies or
mental health resources in university programs.

College students experience high levels of stress. Mindfulness meditation delivered via a
mobile app may be an appealing, efficacious way to reduce stress in college students.

We aimed to test the initial efficacy and sustained effects of an 8-week mindfulness
meditation mobile app—Calm—compared to a wait-list control on stress, mindfulness,
and self-compassion in college students with elevated stress. ​We also explored the
intervention’s effect on health behaviors (ie, sleep disturbance, alcohol consumption
[binge drinking], physical activity, and healthy eating [fruit and vegetable consumption])
and the feasibility and acceptability of the app​.

Takeaway:
Mindfulness meditation is an effective method in reducing stress. It can be measured
through health behaviors, physical activity, and healthy eating. In the case that I would
like to attempt a different mindfulness method, a research experiment can be
implemented to test whether or not the app is helpful.
 Hariprasad, Parimala. “Design for All Five Senses - A Multi-Sensory Approach to
Design.” ​Medium​, Medium, 1 June 2016,
medium.com/@parimala.hariprasad/design-for-all-five-senses-a-multi-sensory-approach-to
-design-8564547256b.

https://medium.com/@parimala.hariprasad/design-for-all-five-senses-a-multi-sensory-approach-t
o-design-8564547256b

Jinsop Lee, an industrial designer, believed that great design appeals to all five senses. He
called this, the Five Senses Theory. Jinsop also gave a ​Ted talk​ on this topic a long time
ago. ​According to him, one can grade any experience on all five senses. For e.g, you can
grade eating noodles on sight, smell, touch, taste and sound.​ Similarly, you can grade
your biking experience.

This Five Senses theory can be applied to User Experience Testing too. Users can be
asked to review the applications under test and map them on a scale of 1–10 on all five
senses.

- It varies from person to person as everyone’s senses may not work the same way.
- All senses may not be applicable for all people. For some specially abled people,
they may not even be able to hear or see.
- It is hard to implement on large sets of users
- For some products, all senses may not be applicable. For example, how do you
rate this article for taste using this theory?

Despite its drawbacks, Five Senses Theory is a good technique to understand how
products can be designed by cracking into the pulse of users.

Takeaway:
The Five Senses Theory can be applied to any product assessment as well as mindfulness.
This will be an essential factor in deciding what mindfulness techniques to add into my
app. This article goes to show that senses vary from person to person, so there will be
pain points in implementing certain senses. Sometimes, products don’t satisfy all five
senses and that is perfectly normal, but what products can do all five? Does satisfying all
five senses automatically create an overall better experience?
 Jiang, Lola. “UX: Usability Test on Three Mindfulness-Based Apps for Android.” ​Medium,​
Medium, 15 May 2016,
medium.com/@hjwwjxm/ux-usability-test-on-three-mindfulness-based-apps-for-android-9
c5d631880c0.

https://medium.com/@hjwwjxm/ux-usability-test-on-three-mindfulness-based-apps-for-android-
9c5d631880c0

1. They had at least 2 of the 9 most common types of guided meditations.

2. They contained timers and provided reminders.
3. They provided progressive/program-based mindfulness training. (Notice that none of
them were as systematic as ​MBCT​ or ​MBSR​.)
4. They provided exclusive texts and videos explaining the concepts of mindfulness.
5. They provided an option to share the user’s experience in social networks. Some also
had an app community.

1.​ It’s hard to keep on practicing every day​, because it’s monotonous and the effect is not
as significant as many have imagined. So many interviewees admitted that they often
gave up halfway.
2. ​Novices tend to get distracted easily and their minds wander a lot when practicing;
some even fall asleep until the bell rings again. Thus, they often feel discouraged and
doubt their efforts.
3.​ It’s hard to break the habits and apply mindfulness in action.​ For example, some
interviewees argue that eating mindfully is unachievable because girls tend to have lunch
together. When she eats alone without using her cell phone, it is so tasteless.

Design Suggestions:
Incorporate additional self-efficacy statements ​( e.g. “Believe in yourself; keep
practicing”) in the course materials to motivate users to turn motivation into action

Action planning.​ Let users to write down when, where, and how they plan to engage in
the assigned mindfulness practice. ​Statements related to planning will also appear to
improve their planning.

Coping planning. ​Ask users to envisage potential obstacles that might hinder their
practice, and concrete strategies​ that they would use to overcome them.

Recovery self-efficacy. ​Add reminder statements to emphasize the importance of

resuming practices when they lapse. ​For example, “If you fell asleep during practice,
don’t be discouraged. Just learn to feel your body; you can do it!” Also, ask users to write
down their successful experiences to further reinforce their regular practices.
A variety of pop-up messages appeared in the following session to increase their efficacy.
For example, if the users practice only 1–2 days a week, the message was “Keep working
hard; you will feel the changes if you practice mindfulness regularly. Using the action
and coping planning worksheets and your self-efficacy, you can practice more!”

Takeaway:
Most mindfulness apps in the market are focused solely on guided meditation and that
alone is not enough to help engage users to build a healthy strong habit for mindfulness in
their everyday routine. To help with this face-to-face interaction problem, Jiang
suggested various features that would force the user to come back to the app. Such
suggestions include reminders, progress tracker, and community engagement. These three
features are key in making the user more engaged in mindfulness and aware of their
habits. One feature that stuck out the most was coping planning. Current apps in the
market focus more on building the habit for the users rather giving users the flexibility to
build mindfulness at their own pace. More flexibility and personalization is what
mindfulness apps need.
 Mani, Madhavan, et al. “Review and Evaluation of Mindfulness-Based IPhone Apps.”
JMIR MHealth and UHealth​, vol. 3, no. 3, 2015, doi:10.2196/mhealth.4328.

https://mhealth.jmir.org/2015/3/e82/

Though many apps claim to be mindfulness-related, most were guided meditation apps,
timers, or reminders. ​Very few had high ratings on the MARS subscales of visual
aesthetics, engagement, functionality or information quality…

9 common guided meditations:

1. Breathing​ — deep breathing with awareness of the in and out breathes
2. Body scan​ — awareness of the body focusing on each of the body parts, usually
starting from the toes and progressively moving towards the head
3. Sitting meditation​ — breathing meditation in a sitting posture, with awareness of the
body
4. Walking meditation​ — practicing mindful walking, raising awareness of each
movement as we walk slowly
5. Loving kindness meditation​ — a meditation practice to accept, love and show
kindness to oneself and others
6. Thoughts and emotions​ — acknowledging thoughts and emotions non-judgmentally,
as they come and go
7. Mountain meditation​ — a guided imagery practice, imagining oneself as a mountain
and feeling stronger
8. Lake meditation​ — a guided imagery practice, imagining oneself as a lake,
experiencing stillness and peace
9. Three-minute breathing space​ — a 3-minute guided meditation, with becoming
aware in the first minute, gathering and focusing attention in the second minute, and
expanding the attention in the third minute.​
Almost all apps provided mindful breathing and body-scan exercises… The recording
quality, voice used, and pace of the delivery of guided meditations varied from app to
app...

Timers, reminders, meditation, relaxation, or reference apps can assist in mindfulness

practice​, but categorizing them as mindfulness apps is inappropriate...

Mindfulness is much more than meditation, a breathing exercise, or a relaxation

technique. Meditation is a practice that aids development of mindfulness. Breathing is
used as an exercise in the practice of mindfulness and relaxation can be an outcome.
Contemplative practices (breathing, sitting, walking meditations), understanding
emergent bodily and mental experiences, and withdrawing from habitual experiential
avoidance form part of mindfulness training in mindfulness-based interventions such as
MBSR and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy.​ A mindfulness app should clearly
explain the philosophy and practice of mindfulness and address common misconceptions.
An app without mindfulness education may be beneficial if this information has been
provided as part of face-to-face mindfulness training…

Mindfulness is a habit and a mind-training skill that requires regular practice and
sustained effort to be effective​. This is a challenge for both face-to-face and app-based
mindfulness training… Headspace, Mindfulise, Buddhify 2 and Smiling Mind exceeded
the minimum acceptable level score (3.0) on the MARS engagement subscale. These
apps had high-quality graphics, simple and easy-to-use interfaces, and soothing voices for
the guided meditation tracks. Headspace used short video infographics that
complemented the guided meditation tracks…

Participation in an app community can help motivate users to engage in healthy activities.
A supportive app community can help users share and discuss their mindfulness
experiences and the challenges of regular practice… ​This could potentially complement
or substitute for the support provided in face-to-face mindfulness training. While nearly
50% of the reviewed apps provided social network sharing, only Headspace and
Meditacious incorporated app community support…

Takeaway:
This study evaluated the mindfulness apps in the 2015 market. Given the data, they
observed several patterns in successful mindfulness apps: guided meditation with
soothing voices, timer, and reminders. Some included community based interactions
which helped incentivise users to come back to use the app. The nine most common
guided techniques required users to close their eyes, imagine, and breathe. Information
and functionality features were lacking overall and a solution to reduce face-to-face
mindfulness training must be addressed.
 Mileikyte, Sandra. “Mindful Design • Part 1.” ​Medium,​ Prototypr, 23 Aug. 2018,
blog.prototypr.io/mindful-design-part-1-b0f6282c455a.

https://blog.prototypr.io/mindful-design-part-1-b0f6282c455a

A new trend has recently started in Silicon Valley and it’s called digital wellbeing​.
Finally, big companies are acknowledging screen addiction as a problem and accepting
their responsibility to do something about it. Quite recently ​Apple unveiled new features
which will encourage users to set clear boundaries with their devices. Google is releasing
a new system update called ​Android 9 Pie​ with a whole list of features focusing entirely
on digital wellbeing. Another promising product is ​Thrive App​ (for now, only available
on Android devices) which has been launched by Arianna Huffington’s ​Thrive team​. This
app allows you to put your phone in “thrive mode” which essentially is the same as if you
were to go on a digital detox. Numerous times a day, whenever suits you.

Mindful Design is a human-centred approach to create products which respect user’s

privacy, time and attention as well as enhance the state of optimum human experience.

Takeaway:
Digital wellbeing has been a hot topic within the last two years. Many big named
companies made strides to address digital wellbeing. Devices are anti-mindfulness and
producing apps and features to counter this unhealthy consequence is greatly needed;
however, mindfulness apps in the market are saturated with meditation guides, rather than
useful techniques to help users practice digital detox.
 Scacca , Suzanne. “Can You Design A Website For The Five Senses?” ​Smashing
Magazine,​ 4 Aug. 2020,
www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/08/design-website-five-senses/.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2020/08/design-website-five-senses/

A website is a medium to be seen, so you’d assume that the sense of sight is the most
powerful one to play with. ​But there’s a difference between a visitor taking in the photos
and words on a web page and ​feeling​ something because of what they’ve seen.

Color theory​ is one tool you can use to inspire visitors to feel a certain way based on what
they see. However, that can be problematic as colors often have multiple meanings not
just across cultures but within them as well. So, while you might think you’re making
visitors feel happier with bright yellow hues, it could instead be making them feel
overwhelmed and anxious.

Looking at this photo, I can still smell the “Berry Good” strawberry. ​This is going to
sound crazy, but it reminds me of success. I don’t know if my teachers had an entire pack
of the strawberry stickers, but it’s the one I got most frequently. And so I guess that’s
why I associate it with good grades just by looking at it.

I was driving to the beach over the weekend when a song came on that made me smile. It
was “What I Got” by Sublime, ​a song I listened to many times when making the long
drive to the beach with friends in college.

There might not be any sound coming through this site, but we all know the distinctive
sound of a baby’s laugh. ​For parents trying to decide where to have their kids educated,
they’ll be pleased to hear the sound of a child laughing as they visit this web page.

I also believe that people become more invested in an outcome when they get to see the
process of it being made. This isn’t something we’re usually allowed to see as consumers.
We go out to eat and the food is sitting there on a plate for us. So, there’s something
about the build-up of watching food or drinks being made that adds something extra to
the experience.

The sense of touch is a relatively easy one to depict on the web. We see it all the time on
ecommerce sites that allow shoppers to zoom in on ​fabrics and get a sense for what they
feel like to touch or wear.

One element you might want to fixate on is temperature. ​If there’s a heating or cooling
element, work with that.
Another element you can play with is the feeling or pressure of human touch.​ There are
many applications for this, though it’s particularly useful for websites that advertise
therapeutic services.

Takeaway:
There are various ways to interpret the five senses. The sense of touch can expand to
physical items or a physical touch. Touch can be assessed through temperature as well.
All these factors can be recorded or documented which is great for mindfulness.
Another takeaway I learned from Scacca was the sense of sound. Not only can the user
physically hear a sound, but also recall a sound. These both can ignite an emotion or
memory in a user which could also be documented.
 Stoyanov, Stoyan R, et al. “Mobile App Rating Scale: A New Tool for Assessing the
Quality of Health Mobile Apps.” ​JMIR MHealth and UHealth​, vol. 3, no. 1, 2015,
doi:10.2196/mhealth.3422.

https://mhealth.jmir.org/2015/1/e27/?trendmd-shared=0

Much of the published literature focuses on technical aspects of websites, presented

mostly in the form of checklists, which do not assess the quality of these features [​8​-​10​].
Website quality can be described as a function of: (1) content, (2) appearance and
multimedia, (3) navigation, (4) structure and design, and (5) uniqueness [​11​].

The descriptor of goals was clarified to read; ​Does the app have specific, measurable, and
achievable goals (specified in app store description or within the app itself)?; to help
distinguish it from the item accuracy of app description, which often relates to the app’s
goals. ​On the information subscale, raters found it difficult to determine when lack of
information within an app should be rated as Not applicable or as a flaw; this item was
therefore revised to require that information be rated unless the apps were purely for
entertainment.

The use of objective MARS item anchors and the high level of interrater reliability
obtained in the current study should allow health practitioners and researchers to use the
scale with confidence​. Both the app quality total score and four app-quality subscales had
high internal consistency, indicating that the MARS provides raters with a reliable
indicator of​ overall app quality, as well as the quality of app engagement, functionality,
aesthetics, and information quality.

Takeaway:
This journal breaks down the effectiveness of health app designs using MARS. MARS
helps determine the overall app quality, by measuring the app engagement, functionality,
interface, and information quality altogether. With health apps in mind, app engagement
and information quality are extremely valued. This is something to keep in mind when
providing information on mindfulness.
 Tan, Vicki. “Vicki Tan: designing for mindfulness.” ​DesignBetter​, 2018,

www.designbetter.co/conversations/vicki-tan.

We’ve found that rather than teaching people just about meditation, it’s much more
helpful to get them to think inward about why they’re meditating, because that will keep
them coming back to it. ​We hope that’ll create this intrinsic drive to practice, and it’s true
that in the short term, you might just be coming back because the app is telling you to
come back…

It’s not that people don’t have the time, it’s that doing healthy things, like eating healthy
and exercising, meditating, somehow feels harder to do during that free time.​ So we’ve
tried to help them find time in their schedules so they can just sneak it in—not trick
themselves, but do it in a much easier, frictionless way…

One other thing we found really helpful to clarify in terms of onboarding and getting
people to meditate, is the idea of not doing it enough and feeling guilty about missing a
day or two. ​People think healthy habits have to happen every day to count, but that’s not
the case. So we’ve started to move away from saying, “You should be meditating every
single day,” to more of this idea of a “minimum dosage,” which can be two to three times
a week, especially when you’re just starting off. ​I think that really helps people not feel
like they’ve completely fallen off the train when they miss one day.

Takeaway:
Designing a mindfulness product on an anti-mindfulness device can be seen as
counterproductive and extremely difficult to build. Vicki Tran, a senior product designer
at Headspace, explores solutions for users to implement mindfulness while using the app,
but also in their free time. Designing mindfulness is the same process as slowly building
a habit and tracking it. Headspace, the leading mindfulness app, is a great place to start
building that habit beginning with the 10 week trial program.
 Trent, Valerie. “What If We Designed With All 5 Senses?” ​Work Design Magazine,​ 3 Oct.
2019, www.workdesign.com/2011/02/what-if-we-designed-with-all-5-senses/.

https://www.workdesign.com/2011/02/what-if-we-designed-with-all-5-senses/

Sure, we’re not typically designing workspaces for musicians, but maybe we should be
taking some cues from how ​they maximize the richness of the world of sound around us
as a potential source of daily inspiration.

You have to set the mood as a designer; using music can only emphasize and lift that
atmosphere. ​Designing the sounds one hears is just as important as the sounds you don’t.

Consider all those smells that bring you comfort and happiness.​ Maybe it’s maple syrup,
which reminds you of breakfasts growing up. Maybe it’s roses, like the garden behind
your grandma’s house. Perhaps it’s the clean mint from a refreshing stick of gum.

Scientists agree that ​smell and memory have a special relationship​; ​ people can often
recall aromas from childhood or a distinctive odor they’ve only smelled once.

But in addition to keeping water, coffee, and the occasional client fruit basket handy, how
about we consider how to ​promote brain stimulation by including both spicy foods and
sweet treats in our designs​? Each of these categories could create a burst of energy for the
employees and another layer of senses in the office.

Using all our senses to design will not just make us stretch our creativity to new
standards, but it will give the end users stimulating feelings, memories, and experiences.
Spaces that support all five senses are positioned to be more wholly successful places to
happily and comfortably entertain, work, and experience life.

Takeaway:
Incorporating the five senses can enhance users’ mindfulness. It requires the user to be
present and aware of their surroundings, emotions, and thoughts. The five senses are
connected to memories and that alone can bring varying emotions to the user. By
documenting these feelings, emotions, and senses, the user is practicing mindfulness
without even knowing it!