2020/06/16 by Kai Lukoff, Ulrik Lyngs, Stefania Gueorguieva +4 · 1 voice
Computer Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Buddhism #Compassion #Computer science #Contemplation #Digital Mental Health Interventions #Educational Methods and Impacts #Epistemology #Exploratory research #Mindfulness #Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions #Mobile apps #Political science #Psychology #Psychotherapist #Relaxation (psychology) #Social psychology #Sociology #World Wide Web #cs.HC
paper · pdf · doi:10.1145/3357236.3395444
published as Proceedings of DIS '20: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2020 · 10 pages (excluding references), 4 figures. To appear in the Proceedings of DIS '20: Designing Interactive Systems Conference 2020
arxiv created 2020/06/16 · arxiv published 2020/06/16 · openalex publication_date 2020/07/03 · arxiv updated 2021/01/29 · openalex created_date 2022/07/28 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Hundreds of popular mobile apps today market their ties to mindfulness. What activities do these apps support and what benefits do they claim? How do mindfulness teachers, as domain experts, view these apps? We first conduct an exploratory review of 370 mindfulness-related apps on Google Play, finding that mindfulness is presented primarily as a tool for relaxation and stress reduction. We then interviewed 15 U.S. mindfulness teachers from the therapeutic, Buddhist, and Yogic traditions about their perspectives on these apps. Teachers expressed concern that apps that introduce mindfulness only as a tool for relaxation neglect its full potential. We draw upon the experiences of these teachers to suggest design implications for linking mindfulness with further contemplative practices like the cultivation of compassion. Our results also speak to the importance of coherence in design: that the metaphors and mechanisms of a technology align with the underlying principles it follows.