Take It Easy: A Little Adaption to Assist Mindful Breathing. This project is an adaptive design for users who feels anxious or with anxiety disorders that need to use mindful breathing to calm down. This design will help user focus on their breath so that they can focus on the breath to reduce high BPM to a normal range.
Practicing mindful breathing is gently focusing attention on the breath. You begin noticing the breath coming in and going out. You are not trying to change your breathing in any way, and because of this, there are no expectations; you are merely aware of the breath from moment to moment.
Mindful breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body’s “rest and digest” system. When the parasympathetic nervous system is activated, your heart rate and blood pressure lowers, which can help reduce anxiety in the process (Vago & Silbersweig, 2012).
Practicing mindful breathing can decrease negative automatic thoughts, which can be common in people with depression. Mindful breathing can make way for a better mood (Feldman, Greeson, & Senville, 2010).
As a person who suffers from anxiety a lot, one problem for me is, that mindful breathing can help me to release anxiety, but sometimes when I am too anxious about things, it is really hard for me to start mindful breathing. You have to focus on breathing to release anxiety but sometimes I am too anxious to be focused! I think the problem is, breathe is a very subtle action, it is not like watching a video or typing on the keyboard that needs a lot of attention, so it is really easy that the attention shifts. I wonder if I can have an object holding in my hand that could be related to breathing that can help me calm down to focus.
Besides, when I tried to do mindful breathing, I need to set an alarm to remind me the session is finished. But no matter what sound effect I am using, it makes me somehow anxious about the sound is about coming. It bothers me that the ending sound will suddenly happen, so I hope I can find a way to change that.
Help user to easier focus more on breathing
To reduce the anxiety of the ending signal
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Restore Sunrise Alarm - Feel well-rested from sunset to sunrise
An alarm that uses light to wake you up. By gently waking you up with light instead of sound, the Restore Sunrise Alarm mimics a natural dawn, moving from red to orange to white before your chosen alarm sounds. This gradual exposure to light prompts your brain to release cortisol, the hormone that cues your body to wake naturally and gently.
Apps that help mindful breathing
There are several examples of mindful breathing and technology on apps and wearable devices kinda high-tech products. The devices that can detect the heart rate and give feedback. Someone make it out of a breathing game. But I want to keep my project as simple as possible.
A little windmill that users can blow wind to it. This little object visualized the process of breathing, when you breathe, the mill turns. The user’s interaction with the windmill visualized the process, making the user aware of they are breathing. If it is difficult to control minds, then it will be easier to focus on looking at an object moving first. So, I think this solution may help the user to calm down to breathe first.
Different scenery input to signal the end of a session. Sound is too sudden as a sensory, even if we fade in the sound we can still have a moment to notice that something is ringing. For me, it usually gives me unpleasant experiences. I want to change it into another soft sense. For example, the light. What if the ending of the alarm could be a light gently lit up? Probably it will be a better signal for sensitive people.
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There will be two parts to my prototype, one is the windmill, the fan blades, and the second part is the lamp, as the bottom of the whole object. Design: It will be a windmill that you need to really blow wind to it to make it a spin. So that it makes the users focus on their breath. The bottom part is a timer, and the light will be on when the time is up.
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There is a sensor to test the heartbeat
LEDs
signals that the session is over
Arduino heartbeat Sensor
when the heartbeat is down to a range, the light will be on
Button
press to start
The fan blade itself will be the light
