Mindful Bloom
An EEG/AR experience which focuses on visualising mental unrest and using finger painting as an intuitive exercise to aid in the calming of the mind and encouraging future mental self awareness. I co-authored a paper that was published on the Association of Computing Machinery and presented at the Interactive Surfaces and Spaces (ISS) 2023 conference.
My Role
Interaction Designer
3D Artist
Team
Eric Zhao, Sunniva Liu, Anton Renouf
Tools
Unity, Autodesk Maya, Adobe Substance Painter
Timeline
3 weeks
Overview
We present a novel fusion of Augmented Reality (AR) and Electroencephalography (EEG) to enhance digital mindfulness techniques in future desk-based workplaces.
By visualizing mental unrest in paint stroke and engaging users in intuitive finger painting exercises, this system aims to promote a more immersive and natural mindfulness intervention. Users paint from an "ink pool" towards stress-indicating objects, which disappear upon contact. Their EEG data indicating mindfulness level is visualized through brush stroke colors.
The resulting flower of brush strokes symbolizes the user's achieved state of mindfulness. Mindful Bloom strives to promote mindfulness in daily menial tasks, and inspire the integration of similar experiences to foster workspace well-being.
Initial Information
In the modern world, “mental health conditions are increasing worldwide. There has been a 13% rise in mental health conditions in the last decade (to 2017). Two of the most common mental health conditions, depression and anxiety, cost the global economy US$ 1 trillion a year. Despite these figures, the global median of government health expenditure that goes to mental health is less than 2% [15].
Given the rise of mental health problems in society, there are many different meditation and mindfulness applications designed to help users overcome negative feelings and be able to enjoy life. However, we identified some problems with these applications. There are “hundreds of them, so it's challenging to find the one or two that are right for you. They focus on very short sessions; people seeking more than ten minutes of practice at a time may feel limited. If you don’t know what your goal is then the apps might not feel useful and they are one-sided rather than truly interactive”.
Problem Statement
Meditation and mindfulness applications do not enlighten users to the causes of their stress or anxiety, they only deal with the effects. They are a reactive rather than proactive tool that the user must make a conscious effort to use once they recognise their anxiety and deal with it.
Research
Finger painting has been proven to be a very powerful mindfulness activity as it can “bring you into the present moment and can lower stress so you can access more of your intuitive side”. In order to create an intuitive interaction that could have a mindful outcome, we researched mobile games designed that encourage mindfulness.
For example, Infinity Loop: Anxiety Relief, an application in which the user rotates lines to make a 2D shape or object. Upon looking at reviews, it is a successful stress relief application for users and induces a calm, mindful state. Inspired by the satisfying interactions on the app, we thought about ways we could create this satisfying and engaging feeling in augmented reality
Infinity Loop: Anxiety Relief interaction example
Target Audience
Our target audience are employees working in environments that blur the virtual and physical. For example, an office worker who had to work in a mixed reality environment like the Metaverse.
Prototyping
To prototype our interactions, I set aside time to explore finger painting and discover what made it an activity that could be used as an active mindfulness exercise in AR.
Experimented with different paints and surfaces
Freedom of exploration and creation is freeing, surprising and rewarding
Imagining different shapes in an environment opened up new avenues of exploration and expression
The tactile, messy feeling was very enjoyable to sense
Discoveries
1. Fingerpaint, like many creative outlets, gives one the sense an emotional and mental weight was lifted upon completion.
2. It was hard to start painting with a blank canvas. The user will need some encouragement to start, perhaps in the form of connecting dots with their finger.
3. The joy, play and sense of freedom is great once you embrace the fact that nothing one paints is wrong.
4. Unexpected surprises, from mixing paints to make a new colour and unique paintings, made it more engaging.
5. In terms of de-stressing, fingerpainting made me feel like I could express myself, releasing pent up feelings in a constructive way and created mental space for me to focus on upcoming work tasks with an improved mood and increased sense of productivity.
6. The paintings I created were peaceful to look at after. There is a sense of achievement and satisfaction. It would be interesting, especially as part of our goal was to create better mental self awareness in the user, to have the shapes/paintings remain in the virtual AR environment to remind the user that mindfulness practice is important.
Development
As our development time was very limited, assets needed to be simple to enable a clear user journey. We moved fast with minimal time for user testing.
3D Art
To show the user has completed the experience and the BCI has detected changes in their mental state, a flower grows from the pool of paint, symbolizing their change and growth.
This flower was designed and modelled to look magical and stand out in the user's virtual environment
Shaders
Paint stroke shader
Prototyping
Paint pool shader
Testing
To prototype our interactions, I set aside time to explore finger painting and discover what made it an activity that could be used as an active mindfulness exercise in AR.
Reflections
This was a rewarding project as I learnt a lot about the possibilities and current limitations of Brain Computer Interfaces. Mainly, current BCIs are highly susceptible to noise, which means the readings can be very inaccurate. Therefore, the best design choice was to make a passive system which informed the finger painting interaction.
I also learnt a lot more about defining a target audience and how that can help guide design choices with greater confidence. However, it was difficult finding end users to test our experience because the ideal end user would be in a stressed state, so the BCI could detect their stress levels and engage them in the experience.
As a result, to prove how the BCI is useful and effective in this scenario, we had to wait and see if the correct data was collected, otherwise we would trigger the start of the interaction ourselves.
Discoveries
1. Fingerpaint, like many creative outlets, gives one the sense an emotional and mental weight was lifted upon completion.
2. It was hard to start painting with a blank canvas. The user will need some encouragement to start, perhaps in the form of connecting dots with their finger.
3. The joy, play and sense of freedom is great once you embrace the fact that nothing one paints is wrong.
4.