Digital interventions are often used to support people with mental health conditions, but low engagement frequently reduces their effectiveness. We investigate the use of a Physical Artefact for Well-being Support (PAWS) to improve engagement and effectiveness of an audio-only guided well-being intervention. Through our handheld shape-changing biofeedback-based PAWS, users can synchronously feel their breath via kinaesthetic haptic feedback. By evaluating our device in a randomised-controlled experimental paradigm (N=58), we demonstrate significant reductions in physiological and subjective (self-reported) anxiety compared to an audio-only control. Our findings conclude that synchronous interactions with one‘s own physiological data via the PAWS, improves engagement and effectiveness of an intervention.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3581188
The ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (https://chi2023.acm.org/)