The whisper of two palms rubbing together. The squeak of a marker on a whiteboard. The swish of fabric against fabric. The woosh of a running faucet. These sounds can help center the mind on the present moment.
Such cues were the driving force of new research from Stanford's SHAPE Lab and the Virtual Human Interaction Lab, which has created a new device they believe can improve mindfulness in an all-too-distracting digital world. The secret is that the keys to mindfulness have been right in front of our ears all along, hidden in the often subtle, overlooked audio cues that help ground us in the beauty and meaning of everyday experiences.
"There's so much time that we spend in these moments - making coffee or waiting in line - where we find ourselves just endlessly scrolling on our phones. Meanwhile, life is passing us by," said Sean Follmer, associate professor of mechanical engineering, director of the SHAPE Lab, and senior author of a new paper in Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies introducing the novel device. "We wanted to create something that makes us more aware of our surroundings and to appreciate the real world over the digital."
"Mindfulness heightens our attention to otherwise mundane daily tasks and transforms routine actions into more purposeful focus and greater engagement in our everyday lives," said Yujie Tao, a doctoral scholar in computer science, a Knight-Hennessy Scholar, and first author of the paper.
Simple device, profound outcomes
Tao does a lot of research in augmented and virtual reality - technologies designed to take users out of the real world and into synthetic ones. That got her thinking about the nature of reality and how technology might also be used to help users appreciate the real world.
The device itself is quite simple. Two wrist straps with microphones gather sounds produced by hand interactions, digitally amplify them, and channel enhanced audio to earbuds. Unlike existing mindfulness technologies that rely on verbal instructions to guide users, the proposed device adopts a sensory-driven approach, making sounds of ongoing actions more accessible for mindful awareness.
Demonstration of a wearable device that amplifies sounds around the user's hands and plays them back to the user in real time, encouraging attention and curiosity toward the present-moment experience. | Stanford SHAPE Lab
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The impact, however, is profound, the researchers say. This auditory approach draws the user into the tasks and objects, encouraging them to perceive their environment with renewed clarity and curiosity. The sounds focus the mind and direct the attention into the moment.
"By playing these real-world sounds back in real time, our device invites a fresh perspective on ordinary interactions and fosters greater awareness of the present moment," said Follmer.
To test their hypothesis, the team conducted an in-lab experiment with 60 users. During the study, users interacted with various objects, with half receiving audio augmentation from the device while the other half did not. Researchers measured the device's impact using both standardized questionnaires (e.g., the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale - State) and tracked user behavior, such as the length of time spent examining objects and the exploratory patterns they exhibited.
"Participants with audio augmentation reported a statistically higher level of mindfulness. They also tended to explore objects for a longer time and exhibited more trial-and-error behaviors compared to those who did not have audio augmentation," Tao said.
These results aligned with qualitative feedback from a formative study conducted with two mindfulness coaches. One participant described the impact of the device, "I felt like I could just be a child and go into a child play state," and the feeling was "intimate" and "safe." Another described the experience as "a way of helping people fall in love with the world again, like to recover things that have been lost."
New directions
The research team is looking at the device's long-term effectiveness and benefits, as well as exploring the potential for integrating it into existing mindfulness training programs. They are also interested in investigating its potential relevance in clinical or therapeutic settings, such as applications related to anxiety disorders and ADHD.
"We believe this device has the potential to help us all make sense of our world once again," Tao said.
