Interoceptive Interaction: An Embodied Metaphor Inspired Approach to Designing for Meditation

Meditation technologies often use visual or sound metaphors to represent mental states, but these external modalities can pull attention away from the body. This paper introduces interoceptive interaction, using embodied metaphor theory to design mappings to the internal sense of thermoception. The authors built WarmMind, an on-body interface with heat actuators, and tested it with 10 participants, comparing thermal metaphors to the soundscape metaphors of the Muse meditation app. Findings show a tension: soundscape metaphors are highly discoverable but hinder attention regulation, while ambiguous thermal metaphors feel as if they come from the body and support attention regulation. The authors discuss qualities of embodied metaphors and propose a framework for designing metaphorical mappings in meditation technologies.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Meditation is a mind-body practice with considerable wellbeing benefits that can take different forms. Novices usually start with focused attention meditation that supports regulation of attention towards an inward focus or internal bodily sensations and away from external stimuli or distractors. Most meditation technologies employ metaphorical mappings of meditative states to visual or soundscape representations to support awareness of mind wandering and attention regulation, although the rationale for such mappings is seldom articulated. Moreover, such external modalities also take the focus attention away from the body. We advance the concept of interoceptive interaction and employed the embodied metaphor theory to explore the design of mappings to the interoceptive sense of thermoception. We illustrate this concept with WarmMind, an on-body interface integrating heat actuators for mapping meditation states. We report on an exploratory study with 10 participants comparing our novel thermal metaphors for mapping meditation states with comparable ones, albeit in aural modality, as provided by Muse meditation app. Findings indicate a tension between the highly discoverable soundscape's metaphors which however hinder attention regulation, and the ambiguous thermal metaphors experienced as coming from the body and supported attention regulation. We discuss the qualities of embodied metaphors underpinning this tension and propose an initial framework to inform the design of metaphorical mappings for meditation technologies.