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Coping with negative emotions through breath control

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Coping with negative emotions through breath control

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Content Blowing Blues: Coping with Negative Emotions through
Breath Control
by
Xuan Li
_________________________________________________
A Thesis Paper Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
(INTERACTIVE MEDIA)
May, 2013
Copyright 2013 Xuan Li

ii
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Marientina Gotsis, my committee chair. Her expertise,
dedication and patience deeply influenced this project. My committee members:
Mark Bolas, who lent invaluable perspective and advice; and Thai Phan, who helped
me with technical and design challenges.
I would also like to thank Peter Brinson, who supported me in pursuing an
unorthodox interaction mechanic; Jeremy Gibson, who helped me with a difficult
design problem; and Steve Anderson, for his inspiring feedback. Thanks to Tracy
Fullerton whose feedback sparks confidence and new paths of thinking.
Lastly, I thank my parents for their unshakable support.
iii
Table of Contents
List of Figures iv
Abstract v
Introduction 1
Background 5
Prior Art Review 7
Blowing Blues Structural Design 12
Evaluation 22
Discussion 24
Conclusions 27
Bibliography 29
iv
List of Figures
Figure 1: “Diary Box” section showing drifting feather.
Figure 2: Feather exploding out letter particles.
Figure 3: Particles fading into letters and coalescing into a motivational
message.
Figure 4: The fully formed motivational message.
Figure 5: “Snow Writing” in the Diary Box.
Figure 6: “Message ring” object coloring the “brain world” with
emotions.
Figure 7: Cloud of negative emotion words.
Figure 8: “Blowing Blues” section showing gameplay.
v
Abstract
This paper introduces Blowing Blues, an interactive application for building
player's “immunity” against anxiety and negative emotions. The application uses
breath-based interaction inspired by neuroscience, psychology and games to help
players cope with their inner “enemies”.
1
Introduction
Stimuli, Mind, and Emotions
The pressures of daily life and external stimuli can act like invisible messages
“attacking” the mind, and leaving a “sickness” within. This perspective comes from
Brain Mind Healing, a popular book written by Japanese physiologist Akikazu
Takada. In his book, Takada used psychology theories and his physiology training to
self-treat his own depression with reported success. Blowing Blues, an interactive
health application, borrows from his insights and strategies to allow users to practice
Takada's methods to improve one's emotional self-control.
Relationship between breathing and emotions
When we feel “stressed” we find it hard not to sigh. When we finally finish a
challenging task, we also exhale and feel a sense of relief. Doctors often advise a
nervous patient to “take a deep breath”. Our breathing is deeply connected to our
emotions and regulating our breath can be an important skill for managing our
emotions. Brain Mind Healing also prescribes breathing as a key way to improve
emotions. In a separate article, Takada discusses the benefits of Buddhist breathing
practice discussing how these ancient techniques can trigger the release of
serotonin, a hormone that can help “settle” the mind.
1
Breathing and the Power of Suggestion
Awareness and regulation of breathing, commonly performed in meditation,
1
Takada, “The Benefits of Buddhist Breathing Techniques.” 2009.
2
can have a positive effect on mind and body. Unfortunately, many people, immersed
in the frenetic pace of activity of daily life, fail to recognize that something as
fundamental as breathing can improve their health. Blowing Blues aims to help a
wider audience use breathing to better understand and manage their emotions,
which can help them develop greater resilience against life's “stresses” and worries.
In mindfulness meditation, one aims to focus the mind solely on internal
sensations, including breathing and to ignore distracting thoughts. This is difficult for
many beginners because one's mind can easily wander, leading to a sense of failure
that discourages one from pursuing meditation further. Blowing Blues is inspired
from this traditional method with some differences. The focus here is in on
confronting negative emotions as “in-game” enemies to literally and figuratively
“blow” away using the player's physical breath. Because exhalations naturally go
with inhalations, the full process of breathing organically arises from this method,
achieving similar goals as with meditation. Another difference from traditional
meditation is the association between the player's real negative feelings and the in-
game representation. The removal of in-game versions of the “bad” emotions
suggests the capacity for being able to eliminate the player's actual negative
emotions.
Feasibility of breath control within an interactive medium
Microphones are now ubiquitous in computers and mobile devices, allowing
new forms of human-computer interaction. Microphones can sense the user's
breathing rate and intensity through sound volume. Through this mechanism, it
becomes possible for players to see in-app representations of their breathing in an
interactive environment. This can help them get into the habit of using breathing for
emotion regulation.
3
Breath control is an interesting and relatively unexplored area for interaction
by game designers. While on the surface it may seem limited to be used for
interaction, it is surprisingly rich and multidimensional. Prior research has shown
that breathing can act as a “button” with an on/off state; a three way switch through
inhale, exhale, and holding breath; an analogue slider based on breath intensity; or
a measure of frequency through breathing rate.
2
Also, there are various physiological
limits to breath intensity, duration, and frequency makes this mode of interaction
surprisingly faceted and open to further exploration.
Unlike projects which use modified industrial gas masks, flow sensors, chest
expansion sensors and other dedicated peripherals, in this system, both the player's
inhales and exhales are detected in a non-invasive or cumbersome manner using
standard microphone hardware widely embedded in most computing platforms.
Minimizing the cumbersome aspects of breath sensing can reduce the
inconvenience and aggravation caused by equipment, shifting the focus on the
aesthetic experience.
Additional Features using the Microphone
A Fast Fourier transformation algorithm is used to process the signal from the
computer microphone to help distinguish between inhalation and exhalation. The
software keeps track of breathing frequency, duration, and intensity of the breath
using the measured volume level.

Integrating Stereoscopic Head-mounted Displays
New head-mounted displays (HMDs) are being pioneered at the Mixed
2
Tennent, “Breathalising Games: Understanding the Potential of Breath Control in Game
Interfaces.” 2011.
4
Reality Lab at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Patients with serious
mental health problems often require a stand-alone environment separate from
physical reality in which they can be immersed for healing. This virtual reality
technology can block out physical reality and immerse the user in a stereoscopic,
computer-generated environment in which they can practice fighting against their
inner “enemies”. HMDs support the goal of Blowing Blues by increasing immersion.
The application includes an artistic simplified rendering of a three-dimensional
model of the human brain to allude to how negative messages affect the mind. This
can encourages the patient to fight negative signals as part of self-treatment.
5
Background
The effects of persistent negative emotions are widespread. Depression
affects more 350 million people worldwide. It has been estimated that by the year
2020, depression will be the second leading cause of disability throughout the
world. Emotion regulation problems can affect other areas of health. Risk for
Alzheimer's disease has been shown to increase with depression
3
. At its worst,
mental health suffering can lead to death. In 2010, there were 38,364 fatalities by
suicide in the United States
4
. One million people die from suicide globally every
year
5
. It is the 10
th
leading cause of death both in the United States and worldwide
6
.
Despite these alarming statistics, not enough effort is directed towards
prevention of mental illness and maintenance or improvement of mental health.
Being mentally healthy implies the ability of a resilient emotion regulation
system and self-reported psychological well-being. While external social and
environment conditions influence our states of mind, improving one's internal
sources of influence is critical for mental health. Change begins on the inside.
This project is an attempt to create an interactive system to make it easier to
practice techniques for treating emotional obstacles and to help cultivate a positive
mindset and prevent falling into the abyss of mental illness.
Building a better bridge between the domain of psychological research and
the mainstream of practical techniques is one aspect of realizing this goal.
3
“Depression Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease”
4
“FASTSTATS - Suicide and Self-Inflicted Injury.”
5
“WHO | Suicide Prevention (SUPRE).”
6
“CDC Features - Preventing Suicide.”
6
Interactivity and game design offers unique abilities to put this knowledge into
action while making it accessible and engaging to a wider audience. Unlike reading,
watching, or listening, interactive applications and games allow us to experience
guided empowerment, and to directly practice the therapeutic techniques in an
environment that responds to one’s actions through immediate feedback. This
project leverages the affordances of interactivity to help users realize their potential
in mastering their own psychological landscape. In the next section, I will present an
overview of some existing interactive works that engage with physical or emotional
health.

7
Prior Art Review
The discussion of three projects below summarize novel attempts at
improving health and wellness through work at the intersections of gaming and
interactivity, health, and data visualization.
Jane McGonigal's SuperBetter is an online-based tool for improving personal
resilience. It features an interface to record and keep track of your self-improvement
activities. It is a place to learn about the scientific basis behind various wellness-
enhancing activities and to connect via social media with other actual players who
share similar health goals. The player starts by setting an overall goal,which in
SuperBetter parlance is called an “epic win.” The flow of playing consists of doing
daily real-life activities recommended by the website and logging in to record what
you have accomplished. The intention is to have real life progress correspond to
“game” system progress. The interface uses elements borrowed from the language
of game design like a point system, power-ups, quests, bad guys, and others to
provide motivation and frame the self-improvement process. When the player
completes an “epic win”, she is rewarded with motivational messages and can
subsequently set a new goal to begin a new game. As in SuperBetter, this thesis
project aims at improving resiliency. However, this project is not a website with
limited interactivity, where the “game” is played in real-life, but an application that
emphasizes breathing as an interaction mechanic to help the player get better and
explore a three-dimensional virtual world.
Created by Nathan Yau, your.flowingdata.com (YFD) is an online data
visualization service for personal data collection, as well as a decision tracking
service aimed at the general public and non-professional audience. Its premise is
that by keeping track of and better understanding one's habits improves the
8
potential for personal behavior change. Users use the popular micro-blogging
service Twitter to input data and messages about themselves. The content of the
data is completely determined by the user. The user can enter data about body-
weight, eating and sleeping habits and so forth. After collecting the data, users can
log-on to to their personal account interface to see the data visualized and interact
with it. Users can explore the data by customizing views and adjusting parameters.
In a real-world scenario, users can for example, keep track of their personal weight
loss goals by seeing their progress over time visualized as dynamic, interactive charts
aimed to be understandable by non-statisticians and lay audiences.
There are several noteworthy design aspects to YFD. One is the decision to
leverage Twitter for data input and collection. This is advantageous because it allows
YFD to fit more easily into the user's already existing data entry habits. To log data
about what one ate, one simply sends a message in the form of a keyword and a
value. For instance: “ate roast turkey.” Users do not have to learn a specialized
language like SQL. Because of this simple syntax, data entry becomes more
conversational. Furthermore, users can enter data using their mobile devices
anywhere or at anytime without waiting for access to a computer. Data could be
logged as an event or thought occurs. Using Twitter as a data proxy allows YFD use
to feel closer to normal Twitter use and benefit from regular usage patterns, making
data collection more frequent. Users are more likely to use YFD if the learning curve
is minimized and data logging becomes a seamless part of an existing social media
routine.
YFD's online interface is another notable design aspect. The interface design
takes into account users’ motivation for data collection and visualization. For
instance, a large motivational headline is prominently displayed on the page. In this
case, the message outlines a weight loss goal. This interface element acts
9
as a constant reminder for the user of his or her long-term vision and goal by doing
data logging and visualization. There is also a bar chart showing a time-line of
progress. This visualization complements the motivational message by giving context
to one's actions and showing how far the user has progressed and how far he or she
needs to go to reach the goal stated in the motivational message. The sorted tag
cloud is used to visualize emotion-related data in a way that captures the organic
nature of feelings. Word size corresponds to frequency of occurrence in the
database. This creates a more natural representation than traditional numerical and
abstract chart or graph.
Sonic Cradle is an interactive system developed by a team at the Interactive
Arts + Technology program at Simon Fraser University for fostering meditative
experiences to manage stress and to help teach and demystify meditation for
general audiences. In this system, a user lies down on a hammock in a dark chamber
absent of visual stimuli of the physical world. The user's respiration is measured by
chest expansion-based biofeedback sensors. This data then drives a surround sound
speaker system in which patterns of breathing interactively creates and modulates
new sounds. Holding a breath creates a new sound, which can then be modified
base on respiration parameters such as rate, depth, and thoracic to abdominal ratio.
Repeating this process locks the attributes of the previously created sound and adds
a new sound that can be modified in the same way. In the overall experience, the
user’s breathing action shapes and mixes various pre-recorded sounds, creating an
ambient soundscape.
This project has several key design aspects that work holistically to affect the
experience. Situating users in a dark room prevents external distraction while lying
in a hammock prevents internal distractions like discomfort or pain. This sensory
deprivation also enhances immersion by focusing the mind away from physical
stimuli and towards the subtle sensations of the media to create a holistic
10
experience of another world. Sonic Cradle's breath-based interaction emphasizes
user creative control through biofeedback, placing users in a position where they
can choose to actively shape their mediated world. As in mediation, the user's
attention becomes a key element of control. The participant can focus inward on his
or her breathing while listening to the sonic feedback. Unlike traditional meditation
and mindfulness practices where difficulty maintaining attention can lead to a
feeling of failure, in Sonic Cradle, environmental sounds are always coupled with
breathing whether the user intends it or not. Thus, the distracted user will notice
the changing sounds and re-orient their attention back towards respiration. Without
initial instruction or pressure put on the user to maintain focus, participants may
loop through periods of attentiveness and distraction without perceiving it as
outright failure. The feedback feature helps make Sonic Cradle easier to use for non-
mediators.
Through informal testing from co-design sessions, optimizing the user's sense
of control was discovered to be a critical dimension of the design. User engagement
depended on having enough control to prevent provoking a stress response while
maintaining long-term interest through subtle interaction mechanics. As will be
discussed later, the process of developing this application led to similar conclusions.
The authors of Sonic Cradle explicitly acknowledged that technological
solutions can contribute additional anxiety. They intended their system to be used
as a way for people to learn specifically “non-technological practices” to manage
stress. This is an important note for the design of my thesis project. While
technology is often a cause of unnecessary stress, it can also be designed specifically
to work for psychological wellness. Blowing Blues is inspired by the notion that tools
can promote health. As will be discussed later, another avenue of research relates to
how players can translate what they learned through using the tool in their non-
technological health-related practices.
11
Lastly, it is interesting to note that Sonic Cradle's development approach
constitutes the practice of “Research through Design”, meaning the creation of a
design artifact and also a theoretical framework with implications beyond the scope
of the original artifact.
7
For example, formal research into the psychology of
immersion which demonstrated the mind's tendency to constantly generate
cohesive subjective realities from senses, become part of a theoretical framework
that informed the aesthetic and interaction design of the artifact itself. The
“Discussion” section of this paper will explain how Blowing Blues hopes to
contribute to new theoretical frameworks useful for future research and artifact
creation.
7
Zimmerman, “Research Through Design as a Method for Interaction Design Research in HCI.”
2007.
12
Blowing Blues Structural Design
The application consists of two primary parts: an introductory interactive diary-like
section called the “Diary Box”, and the main section called “Blowing Blues.” Named
after the overall project name, “Blowing Blues” is a three-dimensional and if using a
HMD, stereoscopic world where players uses their breath to interact with virtual
objects, which act as metaphors for their own negative emotions.
Diary Box
The “Diary Box” section starts with a virtual feather that drifts in an organic
way in response to the player's breath through the microphone. Occasionally, the
feather may touch a watery surface below, creating a gentle ripple. After a few
breaths, the feather will explode into particles that transform into a motivational or
insightful message or quote.
Figure 1: “Diary Box” section showing drifting feather.
13
Figure 2: Feather exploding-out as letter particles.
Figure 3: Particles fading into letters and coalescing into a
motivational message.
14
Figure 4: The fully formed motivational message
For example, these messages include, “sometimes your joy is the source of your
smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy”
8
or “when one door
closes, another opens.” Integrating breath control while playfully interacting with
the feather entices players who may feel a sense of ennui and stodginess a brief
opportunity to breathe and gain relief. The player can blow quick breaths at the
feather daily to see a new phrase or quote. The design goal of these small acts
rewarded with positive messages is to spark in players a sense of hope or having
support for the soul. When the individual letters of the saying fuse into a single
point and fall into the water, a large ripple spreads out, signaling the entry into the
journaling section of the Diary Box.
Diary Box Data Visualization
The journaling section offers four arbitrary colors as representions of four basic
8
A quote from the Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.
15
emotions. Red represents happiness or excitement, yellow represents anger, green
represents feeling ”balanced” or normal, and blue represents feeling pressure or
anxiety. The user can further adjust the saturation of each color to reflect the felt
intensity of one's emotion. Users are asked to choose a color before starting. This
creates an entry with each time they play and they can tag the emotional variance
and intensity of their current writing session.
Users journal though selecting letters with the mouse. Letters fall like
snowflakes down the screen, This is called “snow writing”. The user can also type on
the keyboard to create daily journal entries. As the user selects letters or words,
they fall into a watery surface, creating a ripple. While the user can see the selected
individual letters, she cannot see the whole word appear normally on the screen as
you would if using a word processor. When done writing, the entries are visualized
as an infographic with the color that was chosen previously. Journaling and diary
writing are practices integrated within the game's overall health goals. Diary writing,
unlike other forms of personal writing like blogs or other social media practices, is a
private activity. The relaxed pace of “snow writing” is designed so that one can slow
down to process and express their feelings more truthfully.
16
Figure 5: “Snow Writing” in the Diary Box.

Research has shown that the process of writing down negative feelings can
help us feel better. In a study done by psychologist, Sonja Lyubomirsky, a group of
participants with negative experiences where asked to write about that experience
three times on three consecutive days for fifteen minutes each. Another group was
asked to just ruminate about their negative experiences. After the period of about a
month, compared to the control group, those who wrote felt better while those that
only thought about it did not
9
. The process of writing helped one analyze and make
sense of a situation. Simply thinking about the painful event was not beneficial
because it only replayed the emotions in the mind. On the other hand, people may
naturally want to express themselves to others when in a bad mood. This,
unfortunately, may lead to even more difficulty because of misunderstanding and
social acceptance issues. The goal of the diary box is to give the player a safe space
for emotional processing. In the Diary Box, the player is given a safe, private
environment in which they can reflect and process those thoughts without worry of
9
Lyubomirsky, The Costs and Benefits of Writing, Talking, and Thinking About Life’s Triumphs and
Defeats. 2006.
17
social embarrassment or negative consequences. This software based journal
writing acts as an open, empathic listener, letting the user remove the mask of social
acceptance to gradually and sincerely work towards making sense of their negative
emotions. This cannot replace the value of empathic social responses or
professional therapy, but for individuals whose tolerance for social interaction is
very low or for those who cannot afford therapy, Blowing Blues can be a first step for
confronting or coping with their emotions.

About Blowing Blues
Figure 6: “Message ring” object coloring the “brain world” with emotions.
The Blowing Blues part of the application aims to educate players that chronic
lingering negative thoughts from the mind can eventually damage their “brains” and
cause physically-manifested illness. The setting of “Blowing Blues” is a three-
dimensional artistic, abstracted “mind world” (see Figure 6). A message ring object
carrying colors representing various emotions encounters the “brain world”. The
message ring object transfers its colors onto the brain world, metaphorically coloring
18
the mind with emotions.
Figure 7: Cloud of negative emotion words.
A cloud of negative emotion words surrounds and enters the brain object.
The ring and brain world objects merge, becoming an “emotion virus”, the game
mind world's enemies”. This virus permeates into the mind world and suddenly
more emotion viruses fade into view, each one producing colored “vapor” objects.
The vapor objects gradually permeate the brain space and attack green/healthy
brain cells. This causes the cells to first turn blue, the color of sadness, then purple,
the color of sickness, and finally, brown, the color of “withering away”. These
emotion viruses also display words expressing different emotions such as anger,
challenge, and so forth. The player's goal is to save the mind world by breathing and
blowing away the emotions viruses and by association the hurtful vapor and
negative emotions words.
19
Figure 8: “Blowing Blues” section showing game play action of blowing away
emotions viruses and the “sad” word. Cells are the numerous cyan objects. The
grouping of bluish cells indicates damage caused by vapor.
Figure 8 above shows the word sad in the process of being blown away. The
emotion virus enemies could also be represented as a scrunched ball of words
entered previously in the Diary Box. This personalizes the experience since the
player is getting rid of objects representative of their unique negative emotions.
20
“Blowing Blues” mind world objects.
Message Ring Symbol of “data” that enters one's mind, leading to both positive
and negative emotions.
Brain World Representation of one's mind. It is “colored” with emotions by the
message ring.
Emotion Virus Primary enemy of the mind world.
Vapor Objects spawned from emotion virus that attack the mind world
cells.
Emotion Words Words like anger, stress, or challenge that appear with the emotion
virus object.
Cells Symbolic of brain cells that the player must protect by blowing
away emotion viruses and associated vapor and emotion word
objects.
Blowing Blues using Head-Mounted Displays
Head-mounted display (HMDs) technologies are increasingly within reach of a
broad consumer audience and emerging as a new way to experience interactive
worlds and games. These display technologies have a history of use for training and
health related applications such as in exposure therapy for treating veterans with
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Blowing Blues takes inspiration from these
applications and applies HMDs toward improving the user's engagement by relieving
oneself of inner enemies. The application supports the “Socket” HMD, a low-cost
open-source device developed at the Mixed Reality Lab at USC's Institute for
Creative Technologies.
10
It offers high image quality, wide-field of view in a portable,
10
http://projects.ict.usc.edu/mxr/diy/
21
lightweight, and user-friendly package. Blocking out the external stimuli of physical
reality allows users to focus fully on the task at hand, experiencing only the audio-
visual stimuli of symbolic visuals of their inner enemies and the surrounding mind
world. The stereoscopic image in the HMD adds the dimension of depth to the
experience. For example, when an “error message” is blown away, it is perceived in
the HMD as going further away whereas on a traditional display, the message is seen
as simply shrinking in size. An important feature of HMD use is user head tracking. In
Blowing Blues' mind world, players can freely look around to target and blow out
inner enemies. This enhances the feeling of being in the brain. Lastly, because
players are moving their heads rather than remaining in a locked head position, it
may help reduce the chance of neck strain.
22
Evaluation
An older version of the Blowing Blues section was shown at both the 2012
MeaingfulPlay conference, the 2012 Interactive Media Division MFA program Winter
show, and the 2013 ESCoNS Conference
11
where it won the best software demo
award.
Below is the informal feedback I received from players who tried the demo during
these events:
1. Players were initially reluctant about physically blowing at the microphones. This
may be because of fears of social acceptance of playing in a public setting.
Conducting play tests in a private environment might help answer this question.
Additionally, it became clear there was greater need for breath regulation to guide
players away from the extremes of breathing rate and intensity. This would be most
helpful to players with low lung capacity. Some players reported that they felt
warmed up and even slight sweating after breathing intensely for more than thirty
times. These players stated that after this physical exertion, they felt that a weight
had been removed off their shoulders.
2. Players of older age seemed to enjoy the experience more than younger ones.
Older players may have a deeper understanding of how emotions relate to health, or
greater self-control.
3. The audience seemed to have little prior psychological knowledge of how
breathing and emotional health relate to each other.
4. Players were extremely curious about the HMD and enjoyed the depth perception
it offered. They felt head-tracking feature had interesting potential to add to the
11
Entertainment Software and Cognitive Neurotherapeutics Society. (ESCONS)
23
experience.
5. Players enjoyed the visuals and felt it contributed to a more relaxing experience,
but, some were confused about the meaning of certain objects like the “emotion
viruses”. They felt the music was motivational and uplifting.
Play-tests are needed for the Diary Box section.
In the absence of a long-term study, it is unclear whether Blowing Blues can
promote long-term behavior change towards greater emotional resilience. Further
research and formal testing will help explore this potential.
24
Discussion
This project contributes to the field of interactive media by using breathing-
based interaction and psychology research to create a personalized emotional
health improvement system. It posits that journaling with data visualization
elements combined with breathing based game-play can help users increase
emotional self-knowledge and improve agency over negative emotions.
Further research is needed to test efficacy for short and long-term benefit.
Translating psychological concepts into appropriate interaction mechanics may also
be helpful. Another future research vector may include integration of basic theories
in Eastern medicine and QiGong. Discoveries in these fields that further elucidate
the relationship between emotions, health, and breathing may help inform new
designs.
It may be useful to investigate how to better integrate journal use with users'
preexisting online data entry habits such as blog or other social media use. This can
increase the ease and frequency of journaling and could lead to a greater richness of
affect-related data to further personalize the experience.
It may be useful to develop a feature to measure and record user lung
capacity for breath exercise purposes. This can give players the ability to see changes
in the breath data and potentially encourage them to improve their breathing
capacity. Inspired by a design-based research approach, this project can lead to
future exploration of the potential connections between one's lung capacity and
emotional resilience. Within the larger sphere of mind-brain-body connection
research, how does lung capacity affect one's ability to defend against negative
psychological stimuli? How can health-related software applications use the possible
connections between these physical and mental aspects to improve efficacy?
25
As touched upon briefly in the overview of Sonic Cradle, it may be possible
for the player to translate breathing skill developed through playing the game to
real-world health practice and daily life habits. For example, when the player is not
playing, she can take deep breaths while visualizing negative emotions being blown
away. The impact of tools like Blowing Blues on player's wider-ranging health habits
is an avenue for future research.
Other Future Application Features
In future versions of the Diary Box, a whole year's worth of entries can be
viewed as a time based data visualization in the form of a bar chart called the “river
of emotions”. The horizontal axis is the time in units of days and the vertical axis
measures the number of letters in each day's entry. Each bar is colored according to
what hue the user previously chose to represent the emotional variability of a
particular entry session. If the user writes everyday, the river of emotions will act as
an “emotion photograph”, a record of your inner world history. Using color to
represent the overall feelings embedded in daily entries allows hue changes from
one day's entry to the next reflect shifting patterns of emotions over time. For
example, the user may see a shift from red to blue over a period of several months,
indicating feeling joyous in the summer and more gloomy in the winter. Outliers in
the data or repeating patterns of color may indicate recurrent emotions, informing
the player of what feelings to focus extra attention on. Overall, visualization is a tool
to give perspective and personal insights to one's health improvement process.
Another feature for future development involves the transition from the
journaling section to game play in the mind world. After creating their journal
entries, if players feel they need more emotional processing, they can click a button
called “wrap and blow”. The entries the player previously wrote can become a
procedural animation of words clumped together into a scrunched-up “ball of
words”. Then, the player can blow at the ball to enter the Blowing Blues mind world.
26
The Blowing Blues mind world emotion viruses can be further developed to
rely less on words about emotions and visuals that are more symbolic. For instance,
instead of the word sad, there could be a symbol of animated raindrops to indicate
feeling gloomy. On the audio side, further work is needed to provide a greater
variety of musical styles to match people's differing personalities and emotional
needs.
Lastly, with the advent of increasingly powerful and sophisticated mobile
devices such as smart-phones and tablets that include microphones and an array of
other built-in sensors, Blowing Blues can be developed for these platforms as well to
expand its potential audience.

27
Conclusion
In a period of increasing convergence of interactive media with personalized
health care, there are new opportunities to explore forms of interactive media that
go beyond entertainment applications. Blowing Blues uses interactive methods to
help people to manage their own emotions. The Diary Box offers a space for people
to organize and process their emotions. The data visualization of the “emotion river”
is like a photographic recording of the patterns of one's emotional landscape.
Breathing is an important tool to affect emotions. Meditation emphasizes focused
breathing without distraction. Blowing Blues uses breathing in a different way that
works with the power of suggestion to have players blow out the distracting
emotions.
According to sociologist, Aaron Antonovsky, the sources of mental health
include:
1. Understanding or comprehending the problem or stimuli.
2. Having the resources to deal with it.
3. Feeling that this challenge is meaningful or worthy of engagement.
The Diary Box helps users build self-awareness by providing a place to
process and make sense of feelings. Blowing Blues tries to let players realize that
bad messages can hurt mind and body and cause sickness. Players can blow away
representations of their negative emotions. This cultivates an active “negativity
fighting” attitude and a sense of having agency and the resources to self-treat.
Fighting with inner enemies by blowing them out to heal the mind is a worthwhile
mission. Moreover, the use of the language of interactive media makes psychological
knowledge more easily accepted and engaging. The goal of Blowing Blues is to share
28
the knowledge of psychology in the ivory towers to the mainstream of daily life.
The effects of negative emotions are widespread. It is estimated that only
about 17 percent of adults in the United States are considered to be in a state of
optimum mental health.
12
This fact has far-reaching consequences because mental
health is also deeply connected to physical and holistic health. There is evidence
showing the link between chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular
disease among others and mental disorders such as depression.
13
At its worst,
negative emotional health can lead to death. Almost one million people die from
suicide globally every year.
14
This project is an attempt at designing a system to help improve people's
emotion regulation. Better emotion regulation will bring a happier life.
12
CDC Mental Health Basics
13
Chapman, “The Vital Link Between Chronic Disease and Depressive Disorders.” 2005.
14
WHO Suicide Prevention (SUPRE)
29
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This paper introduces Blowing Blues, an interactive application for building player's “immunity” against anxiety and negative emotions. The application uses breath-based interaction inspired by neuroscience, psychology and games to help players cope with their inner “enemies”.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Li, Xuan (author)

Core Title Coping with negative emotions through breath control

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 04/28/2015

Defense Date 03/08/2013

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag biofeedback,breath,Games,Health,interactive,interface,OAI-PMH Harvest,Psychology

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Gotsis, Marientina (committee chair), Bolas, Mark T. (committee member), Phan, Thai (committee member)

Creator Email xli.webmail@gmail.com,xuan.li@way2sky.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-246777

Unique identifier UC11287933

Identifier etd-LiXuan-1620.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-246777 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-LiXuan-1620.pdf

Dmrecord 246777

Document Type Thesis

Rights Li, Xuan

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA