Just Breathe

Abstract

Motivated by the idea that slow breathing practices could transform the automobile commute from a depleting, mindless activity into a calming, mindful experience, we introduce the first guided slow breathing intervention for drivers. We describe a controlled in-lab experiment (N=24) that contrasts the effectiveness and impact of haptic and voice guidance modalities at slowing drivers' breathing pace, which is a known modulator of stress. The experiment was conducted in two simulated driving environments (city, highway) while driving in one of two driving modes (autonomous, manual). Results show that both haptic and voice guidance systems can reduce drivers' breathing rate and provide a sustained post-intervention effect without affecting driving safety. Subjectively, most participants (19/24) preferred the haptic stimuli as they found it more natural to follow, less distracting, and easier to engage and disengage from, compared to the voice stimuli. Finally, while most participants found guided breathing to be a positive experience, a few participants in the autonomous driving condition found slow breathing to be an unusual activity inside the car. In this paper, we discuss such considerations, offer guidelines for designing in-car breathing interventions, and propose future research that extends our work to on-road studies. Altogether, this paper serves as foundational work on guided breathing interventions for automobile drivers.

Digital Emotion Regulation

“…Schüll (2014) proposed that addicted machine gamblers use gambling to alleviate stress and unpleasant emotions and that casinos and manufacturers explicitly design machines to fulfill this function. Paredes et al (2018) designed relaxation exercises for car drivers using automated haptic seats and voice guidance to boost driving performance. Ashoori, Bellamy, and Weisz (2015) manipulated lighting, music, and images in work environments to improve employee mood and thereby enhance decision-making.…”

Smart City and High-Tech Urban Interventions Targeting Human Health: An Equity-Focused Systematic Review

“…Similarly, these considerations were central in the concepts, designs, and evaluations of the included articles. Examinations of context-orientated outcomes were observed in the evaluations of exercise opportunities for car commuters in traffic situations [82], commuters' stress and perceived problems during trips to work as monitored by a travel companion [83], commuting stress in different simulated situations (e.g., city conditions, highway conditions) that drivers are commonly exposed to [84], commuters' mindfulness during the course of trips [85], and commuter support via exposure to different themes (e.g., natural environments, urban scenes) based on a mood-sensing steering wheel [86]. Additionally, in commuting activities, lighting systems for pedestrians were investigated, assessing their impacts in numerous areas, such as urban (non-residential), leisure, residential, and traffic or commuting places [74].…”

ambienBeat

“…Other Common ways of leading to behavior change of users involve providing feedback in various modalities, such as vibrotactile, heat, auditory, and visual stimulation. However, devices/interfaces [7,30], sleep [12,55], or driving a car [3,53], interacting with art installation [14]. BrightBeat [25] presented about its effectiveness for regulating stress levels with effortless mindful breathing guidance via visual and auditory feedback and presented a vision of the biofeedback, adapting its rate to the user.…”