Paper 457 ~ a Review & Analysis of Mindfulness Research In
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CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK A Review & Analysis of Mindfulness Research in HCI Framing Current Lines of Research and Future Opportunities Nađa Terzimehić Renate Häuslschmid LMU Munich, Munich, Germany LMU Munich, Munich, Germany [email protected] [email protected] Heinrich Hussmann m.c. schraefel LMU Munich, Munich, Germany Electronics and Computer Science, University of [email protected] Southampton, Southampton, UK [email protected] ABSTRACT In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceed- Mindfulness is a term seen with increasing frequency in ings (CHI 2019), May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK. ACM, New HCI literature, and yet the term itself is used almost as var- York, NY, USA, 13 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300687 iously as the number of papers in which it appears. This 1 INTRODUCTION diversity makes comparing or evaluating HCI approaches Mindfulness around mindfulness or understanding the design space itself a is a long-standing concept in Buddhism, intro- challenging task. We conducted a structured ACM literature duced to psychology research in the 70’s by Ellen Langer [32]. search based on the term mindfulness. Our selection process Jon Kabat-Zinn brought mindfulness into therapeutic prac- yielded 38 relevant papers, which we analyzed for their defi- tice and coined the term mindfulness-based stress reduc- nition, motivation, practice, evaluation and technology use tion (MBSR) [24]. His work raised broad awareness and re- around mindfulness. We identify similarities, divergences ceived attention from psychology, psychotherapy, neuro- and areas of interest for each aspect, resulting in a framework science and military researchers, as well as therapists and composed of four perspectives and seven lines of research. meditation practitioners. Approximately one decade ago, We highlight challenges and opportunities for future HCI human-computer-interaction (HCI) researchers got attracted mindfulness research and design. by as well. The growth of the number of emerged HCI publications around the term mindfulness shows a steady CCS CONCEPTS increase in recent years (s. Figure 1d). The communities • Human-centered computing → HCI theory, concepts around an emerging research topic need a clear and common what and models; understanding of the topic comprises and what is out of its scope, which is usually supported by a definition. For KEYWORDS mindfulness, there is a myriad of definitions and conceptual- izations and no clear and mutual understanding of what it Mindfulness; Literature Review; Perspectives; Conceptualiza- comprises and what not, as we elaborate further below. tion; Practice; Meditation; Reflection; Interaction; Well-being Within this analysis, we review the HCI literature fore- ACM Reference Format: grounding mindfulness, to determine: where there may be a Nađa Terzimehić, Renate Häuslschmid, Heinrich Hussmann, and m.c. consensus in understanding, what the foundations in related schraefel. 2019. A Review & Analysis of Mindfulness Research in work for these uses are, and how these understandings of HCI: Framing Current Lines of Research and Future Opportunities. mindfulness have informed associated designs and evalua- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for tions. Our goal is to create a framework of mindfulness in personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies HCI (s. Figure 2) to help researchers both (1) to identify re- are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights search gaps and opportunities and (2) to better communicate for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must ideas by sharing a common understanding of mindfulness. be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or We approached these questions by performing a struc- republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific tured literature review, which, after a careful selection pro- permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. cess, yielded 38 relevant papers. We analyzed these papers CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK regarding research motivation, practice, evaluation and tech- © 2019 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. nology use in mindfulness research. We identified common ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-5970-2/19/05...$15.00 motivations and topics, as well as understandings of mind- https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300687 fulness in HCI, and encapsulated these into a framework Paper 457 Page 1 CHI 2019 Paper CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland, UK CHI 2019, May 4–9, 2019, Glasgow, Scotland UK Terzimehić et al. consisting of current lines of research, as well as perspectives Psychological Concepts. There are a number of concep- on mindfulness. We close this work by highlighting occur- tualizations of mindfulness in broad psychology research ring opportunities and challenges for future HCI research. (e.g., [46, 47, 50, 60]), for example, psychological well-being or mental health. We focus on the three definitions that we 2 CONCEPTS & DEFINITIONS OF MINDFULNESS saw used most often in the reviewed HCI literature. IN OTHER DISCIPLINES Langer [31] is a pioneer in researching mindfulness in the broad field of psychology. She defined mindfulness as This section presents definitions of mindfulness from other a cognitive process of noticing new things and suggests that research fields, in particular from the following three ar- mindfulness is simply the opposite of mindlessness. eas: Buddhism, therapeutic practices of mindfulness and In order to promote the operationalization of mindfulness, psychological concepts of mindfulness. We depict the con- Bishop et al. [9] proposed a two-component model of mind- ceptualizations that were adopted and adapted most by our fulness: (1) self-regulating attention, i.e., maintaining focus reviewed HCI publications and point at the ambiguity of over a period of time to an object (whereas object can be conceptualizing mindfulness. any attention-involved stimulus, such as experience, artifact, Buddhism. The word mindfulness translates the words sati thought etc.) and (2) orientating to experiences, i.e., openness from Pali and its Sanskrit counterpart smrti, which mean to whatever happens in and around a person. "recalling", "having on mind" (e.g., [10]), into the English lan- The conceptualization of Brown & Ryan [12] is of par- guage. As one of the first attempts to verbalize mindfulness, ticular interest for the framework described below. They Nyanaponika equalizes the notion of mindfulness to bare mention two perspectives on mindfulness as (1) a state or attention: "the clear and single-minded awareness of what mode a person rises to, thus becoming (more) mindful in a actually happens to us and in us, at the successive moments particular moment of time; and (2) a long-term trait everyone of perception" [51]. However, these very simple conceptions bears, i.e., a mindful capacity that, however, "varies within of mindfulness do not pass without extensive debates [48]. persons, because it can be sharpened or dulled by a variety of Many scholars argue that the meaning of mindfulness in Bud- factors". We refer to these aspects throughout the rest of the dhism surpasses pure perception and includes many other paper as state and trait mindfulness. mental phenomena, among others, the "lucid awareness" [10] These researchers express their conceptualizations of mind- or a reflection or evaluation [10, 18, 19] of ones’ inner and fulness in different, yet, overlapping ways. According to outer experiences. Classical texts on mindfulness from Bud- Nicholas T. Van Dam, a somewhat critical of the mindfulness dhists’ traditions explain mindfulness as an ineffable spiritual movement, the term mindfulness has "a plethora of meanings" phenomenon [58]. A scientific approach to this spiritual con- and is "an umbrella term used to characterize a large number cept is difficult and can hardly be expressed in definitions. of practices, processes, and characteristics, largely defined in relation to the capacities of attention, awareness, memory/ re- Therapeutical Practices. In psychotherapy, the concept of tention, and acceptance/ discernment" [54] – the ambiguity of mindfulness is applied to help people in dealing with their conceptualizing mindfulness is also what we experience in disorders or coping with life and usually guided by a thera- HCI. We emphasize that we do not consider any of the listed pist or a technology. Jon Kabat-Zinn is attributed for secu- definitions or notions as true or false. Instead, we see them as larizing meditation practices from Buddhism in the late 70s. descriptive points for orientation within the research space. He introduced them to western medicine, where he essen- tially coined the term mindfulness when he founded a clinic 3 METHODOLOGY for stress reduction at the University of Massachusetts. Jon We conducted a structured literature review that targeted full Kabat-Zinn first defined mindfulness as follows: "[Mindful- and short papers as well as works-in-progress and posters. ness is] the awareness that emerges through paying attention We draw the reviewed literature exclusively from the ACM on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to Digital Library as our aim was to understand mindfulness the unfolding