I. Inspirations and Case Studies
Based on the exploration of biophysical sensors in Section 4.2.1, I chose to use mobile phone to detect users’ breathing and walking pace during their walking activities. As walking is an activity requires high level of mobility, physical visualisation from objects is not an ideal mechanism due to its constraint in space. For example, Lozano-Hemmer’s Pulse Room (2006) requires a large number of light bulbs installed on the ceiling. If ‘Ambient Walk’ takes the Pulse Room (Lozano-Hemmer, 2006)’s visualisation mechanism, the participants would only be able to reflect their walking meditation in the room with the light bulbs installed in. The constraint of space is not an ideal situation for ‘Ambient Walk’ which aimed to allow users to foster somaesthetic experiences in their walking at anywhere. Previous HCI design for bodily experiences have explored various techniques to illustrate real-time biophysical feedbacks and/or affective qualities. For example, Khut et al.’s BrightHeart (2011) app used dynamic circles to represent users’ stress or energy levels with various sizes, shapes and colours. Vaara
et al.’s Affective Health (2010) used an infinite spiral to represent continuous stress and energy states. The designers of Affective Health used different colours to map with the skin conductance and the shapes to illustrate the active levels of body movements and energy levels. The continuous spiral allowed users to trace their emotional states, emotional events and active levels at past and present moments. The visualisation of BrightHeart (2011)
‘evolves’ immediately towards the children’s heart rate, which provided a mirror-like experience for the children to focus on their body activities at ‘here and now’. Both the BrightHeart (Khut et al., 2011) app and Affective Health (Vaara et al., 2010) provided more abstract visualisations of bodily experiences fostering open interpretation and imagination of the visual artwork. The multiple visual metaphors (e.g. colours for stress level, shapes for energy level, etc.) of BrightHeart (Khut et al., 2011) and Affective Health (Vaara et al., 2010) increased users’ attention to the visualisation itself. While for ‘Ambient Walk’, the visualisation would be created for users to reflect their body activities quickly and not fully immersed in looking at the visualisation. This is because ‘Ambient Walk’ aims to foster users’ attention to the feelings of their body in breathing and walking rather than looking at the screen. In my exploration of visualisation techniques for ‘Ambient Walk’, I explored a number of simple shapes and animations that represents the dynamics of breathing and walking without creating complex visual metaphors.
Fig 4.2.2.1 Data Visualisation from Khut et al.’s BrightHeart (2011) and Vaara et al.’s Affective Health (2010)
II. Experiment with Visualisation Techniques
As walking meditation involves body movements during the practice, the visualisation would aim to show the immediate changes of body activities while would not absorb users’ attention to the visualisation itself. In my experience with walking meditation, the visualisation on the phone would be taken as a ‘mirror’ that let me be aware of my breathing and walking activities. Therefore, the visual patterns of ‘Ambient Walk’ shall be simple shapes that users
would understand immediately. As ‘Ambient Walk’ encourages user to practice walking meditation in both indoors and outdoors, it is important that the visualisation shall not
‘distract’ users from deep focusing on their walking activities by attracting users to look at the screen all the time. Which is to say, ‘Ambient Walk’ shall foster users’ attention to their perceptions of the body rather than being immersive in the visual environment the app creates. Therefore, I brainstormed about visualisation design with simple shapes like circles, animated dots in a sequence, waveform blocks and particles (see Fig 4.2.2.2). I implemented each visualisation with Processing 3.0 for Android for quick illustration of breathing and walking activities. The list of visualisation designs include:
Shapes of Visualisation
Responsive Animation
Multiple circles (with the same centre)
increase and decrease based on breathing volume
pre-programmed to breathing period (e.g. if the detected breathing period is 6 seconds, then the circles increase to the maximum for 3 seconds then decay for 3 seconds)
respond to breathing period (e.g. if the detected breathing period is 3 seconds which indicated fast breathing, then the circles increase and decrease for a period of 6 seconds to foster slower breathing)
Waveform Blocks increase and decrease based on breathing volume, continuous plotting blocks from left to right of the visualisation area of the phone screen pre-programmed to breathing period (e.g. if the detected breathing period is 6 seconds, then the waveform shows rise and decay for 3 seconds each)
Table 4.2.2.1 List of visualisation designs explored for ‘Ambient Walk’.
Shapes of
Visualisation (cont.)
Responsive Animation (cont.)
Dots in a sequence a dot appears when a step is detected; size of dot represents the breathing volume; plot on screen from left to right continuously
Three dots in a row; one at the left presents the intensity of inhalation;
one at the middle represent the intensity of exhalation; one at the right appears when a step is detected
Particles particles move around the visualisation area of the phone screen; the size of particles represents the volume of breathing; the moving speed represents the walking pace
Table 4.2.2.1 (cont.) List of visualisation designs explored for ‘Ambient Walk’.
When I walked with the three visualisation designs with dynamic circles, I was able to immediately understand the intensity of my breathing activity. The animated circles brought my attention to the fullness of my body when my lungs absorbed and extracted air. When I looked at waveform blocks and dots in a sequence, I saw a continuum of breathing intensity while spent few more seconds to reflect my body state at current moment. When I observed the moving particles on screen, I could reflect my breathing intensity and my walking speed via the size and moving speed of the particles. However, the random movement directions of the particles distracted me from paying attention to how my body felt when I breathed and walked as I tend to stare at the screen to guess the meaning of particle movements.
Comparing to my experience with waveform blocks, dots in a sequence and particles, dynamic circles brought my fullest attention to my body at breathing with the least time interpreting the meaning of the visualisation on screen. When the circles grew and shrunk according to my breathing intensity, I was immediately aware of my breathing and sometimes tried to adjust my breathing period (e.g. from 3 steps inhale to 4 steps inhale) to see how the visualisation changed. When the circles grew and shrink in a ‘prescriptive’ speed (i.e. the period of circle animation is longer when my breathing is shorter), I found myself confused with how the visualisation worked. Therefore, I chose animated circles as the visualisation of breathing for ‘Ambient Walk’ prototype.
Fig 4.2.2.2 The visualisation options I explored in designing ‘Ambient Walk’.