Mindfulness and designing digital calm

A recent New York Times article looks at "Designing Calm," a graduate course at Stanford's Institute of Design that focuses on embedding mindfulness into digital devices that pervade our everyday lives. 

Want your iPhone to monitor your breathing?

There's a course for that. 

Designing Calm is a graduate course at Stanford's Institute of Design that aims to allieviate some of the stresses of contemporary life by introducing mindfulness practices into our technological devices. 

For instance, one Ph.D student created a sensory belt that detects the heart rate. If the heart rate changes due to, say, email overload, a breathing exercise is promptly sent to the user's iPhone to restore optimal breathing. 

To read the New York Times article, click here. 

23/07/12

[photo © flickr.com/The Next Web]