Responsive Aesthetics for Yogic Meditation: An Innovative Design Theory for Holistic Health that supports Autonomy and Effective Training

In an effort to contribute a novel theory to the design of emergent wellbeing technology, this paper presents a creative process involving mixed methods taken by the author in producing a design work, referred to as the prototype. The theory formulated by the author concerns the innovation of holistic health practices, specifically a set of prescriptions that posit an effective simulation of yogic meditation experience through computer technology. The resulting theory is then exercised throughout the development of the thesis prototype—resulting in a design work that employs a relatively new interface that immerses the user in a digital simulation where embodied engagement and responsive aesthetics make up the core of the functionality, in what is intended to be a multimodal holistic wellbeing experience. Additionally, the prototype and its ongoing iterative development are documented

Limber: Exploring motivation in a workplace exergame

Limber, in its current iteration, is a vision-based application that introduces gamification into the workplace. This ongoing effort to incentivize good posture, and regular body movements implements several changes to include; full body stretches (figure 2), team gaming elements, and an ambient display (figure 1). With increased intra and inter team competition our field study of twelve players in a work place aims to better understand the most popular motivators, and answer the question, can gamification promote more healthy behaviour among office workers? What forms of motivation are most effective: personal, intra or inter-group

Design-driven research for workplace exergames: The limber case study

Limber is an office "exergame" aimed at incentivizing regular body movement and good posture. In this paper we describe our progression in design and implementation from a wearable system targeting repetitive stress injury to the back, wrist and neck, to our current vision-based system focused on posture, gross motor mobility and whole body stretches. We argue that our design- driven research approach has helped us to uncover key research questions while also leading to a robust design that effectively manages a tension between motivation to play and the need to concentrate on primary work activities