Dis/Immersion in Mindfulness Meditation with a Wandering
Voice Assistant
Bonhee Ku

Korea Advanced Institute of Scienceand Technology (KAIST)
bhku@kaist.ac.kr

Tatsuya Itagaki

Tokyo Institute of Technology
itagaki.t.ad@m.titech.ac.jp

ABSTRACT
Mindfulness meditation is a validated means of helping people manage stress. Voice-based virtual assistants (VAs) in smart speakers,
smartphones, and smart environments can assist people in carryingout mindfulness meditation through guided experiences. However,the common fixed location embodiment of VAs makes it difficult toprovide intuitive support. In this work, we explored the novel embodiment of a "wandering voice" that is co-located with the user and“moves” with the task. We developed a multi-speaker VA embedded
in a yoga mat that changes location along the body according to
the meditation experience. We conducted a qualitative user study
in two sessions, comparing a typical fixed smart speaker to thewandering VA embodiment. Thick descriptions from interviews
with twelve people revealed sometimes simultaneous experiencesof immersion and dis-immersion. We offer design implications for"wandering voices" and a new paradigm for VA embodiment that
may extend to guidance tasks in other contexts.

CCS CONCEPTS• Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction(HCI); Interaction devices; Sound-based input / output; Humancomputer interaction (HCI); HCI design and evaluation methods;
User studies.

KEYWORDS
User Experience, Voice Assistant, Mindfulness Meditation, Voice
Embodiment, Wandering Voice, Voice Interaction
ACM Reference Format:
Bonhee Ku, Tatsuya Itagaki, and Katie Seaborn. 2023. Dis/Immersion in
Mindfulness Meditation with a Wandering Voice Assistant. In Extended
Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI EA ’23), April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany. ACM, New York, NY,
USA, 6 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585627

1

INTRODUCTION

Mindfulness meditation has shown various benefits for health andwell-being [23]. While research on technology-mediated meditation has a long history [2, 13, 17, 28], the situational factor of the
global pandemic, where people are spending more time at home,
has led to a rise in general and academic interest on new ways
Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal orclassroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributedfor profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citationon the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored.
For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s).
CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany© 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-9422-2/23/04.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3544549.3585627

Katie Seaborn

Tokyo Institute of Technology
seaborn.k.aa@m.titech.ac.jp

of providing or facilitating meditation in the home, especially inhuman-computer interaction (HCI) [1]. Voice-based virtual assistants (VAs), in particular, can provide hands-free guidance, which
is suitable for mindfulness meditation [8, 27]. While work on user
experiences (UX) with VAs has covered factors as diverse as personality [22], gender [14, 19, 30], contexts of use [5, 21], and speechinteraction [4, 31], few have focused on the “body” of the voice andhow it might relate to the body of the user [27]. In theory, VAs are
not only auditory; tactility can be stimulated with vibrations at thelocation of the voice. As such, VAs could offer a combination ofauditory and tactile experiences conducive to guiding embodied
practices such as mindfulness meditation, which are intimately
connected to the user’s body. For this, the voice would have to be
co-located with the user’s body and also “wander” or move synchronously with the user to cue meditation actions associated withcertain body parts at certain times. To the best of our knowledge,
no work has explored the concept of a VA with a “wandering voice.”
To understand this new embodiment experience, we developed anovel “wandering VA” platform comprised of a multi-speaker smart
speaker system embedded in a yoga mat. We conducted a qualitative comparative within-subjects user study using the Wizard ofOz prototyping method [11] where participants experienced two
meditation sessions with two mindfulness meditation VA guides: atypical fixed location smart speaker form factor and the wandering
VA. We asked the following research questions:
RQ1. How do people perceive and interact with a wandering VA?
RQ2. What effect does the form factor of the wandering VA haveon UX compared to Vas with a fixed location?
We found that people had immersive and dis-immersive experiences, sometimes simultaneously, that were linked to other embodiment factors of the VA and the UX. We contribute our novel VA
paradigm and implications for design.

2

RELATED WORK

Staying focused in the moment and not becoming distracted is an
essential but difficult skill that technology could support [5, 12].
Researchers have explored various technologies and their resulting
embodiments to lower the difficulty of learning and engaging in
mindfulness meditation as well as increase the effectiveness of
meditation for users.
Previous studies of human-computer interaction (HCI) have
explored the efficacy of technology in mindfulness practice [9].
Cochrane et al. [10] developed an interactive natural soundscapethat reacted to the user’s EEG1 data. Users who experienced it
felt more comfortable with subsequent mindfulness meditation
1 Electroencephalography

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

exercises. This inspired us to envision a new form of technologymediated meditation based around bodily, location-based interactions, i.e., somatic embodied interactions. On this front, Lokeand Schiphorst [20] found that facilitating somatics can provide
individuals with tools and techniques to gain mastery over theirown mental, emotional, and physical well-being. Therefore, we
designed the speakers making up the “body” of the wandering VA
to be placed close, even intimately near, to the user’s body to see
how it would affect the guided meditation experience. In addition,
Daudén Roquet and Sas [12] and Ståhl et al. [29] explored how
the location of warmth affected breathing and attention control.
They found that temperature feedback aided breathing control;
this inspired us to imagine how other senses, hearing and tactility,
affected meditation.
In addition, there have been studies on various embodiments
to find out how it affects meditation. Jiang et al. [16] created aninteractive embodiment that visualizes the shaking tree in an AR
headset according to the participant’s breathing which is biologicalfeedback. At the same time, they meditated while listening to the
5-minute meditation guide. As a result, the heart rate decreased
during meditation time. Kim et al. [18] produced a VR meditation
game using spatial sound. A four-step system was created, survey,
game session, meditation, and reward session. Participants felt asense of relaxation as much as they enjoyed the spatial sound andartwork after completing the mission. Roo et al. [24] created anaugmented sandbox to inspire people’s meditation motivation andcuriosity. Participants created a garden space using sand on a desk;
they then wore a VR headset and travelled to the garden while
meditating. This system helped meditators to achieve an ideal levelof motivation and meditation effect.
In sum, people have explored using virtual reality (VR), mixed
reality (MR), and temperature to help people meditate. Yet, less
explored is the lived, moment-to-moment experience of practicing
meditation and how to understand the impact of technology onthat experience [9]. Notably, none have explored the notion of a“moving” VA, i.e., a wandering VA embodiment. Also, there has
been no exploration of how a “moving” voice affects the meditation
process. To explore this, we created a wandering VA that provides
guided meditation through the auditory and potentially tactile
medium of voice, co-located with the user’s body.

3 SYSTEM DESIGN
3.1 VAs: Typical and Wandering VAs
A single Bluetooth speaker2 representing a typical fixed location
smart speaker was used in Session 1. This speaker was fixed at a
position 15 cm from the head of the participant. In Session 2, 12
speakers were embedded in a yoga mat (Figure 1). The size of theyoga mat3 was 181*60 cm, large enough for an average man tolie on. 14 Styrofoam pieces sized 60*90 cm were placed under themat to make a 180*60*7 cm size platform. The Styrofoam pieces
were cut to 6 x 6.4 x 7.2 cm in size. Holes were carved out for the
12 speakers4 , each located where the parts of the body would rest
2 Anker SoundCore Mini Compact Bluetooth Speaker
3 Amazon Basic Yoga Mat inches (188 x 61 x 1 cm)

4 BUFFALO BSSP105UBK PC Speaker

Bonhee Ku et al.

on the yoga mat: eyes/face, shoulders, neck, arms, right/left arm,
chest/torso, hands, feet, and right/left leg (Figure 2).
We used Wizard of Oz (WoZ) to simulate the experience. WoZ is aquick prototyping method for interfaces under development, wherea confederate operates the technology in secret [11]. A speakerswitcher5 was used to control which speaker provided prerecorded
utterances at a given moment. The VA voices were developed using
the Google Cloud text-to-speech (TTS) API. We used a young adultfeminine voice, the default setting. Since the voice files created with
the Google Cloud TTS API speak at a constant rate without breathing intervals between sentences, we later used Adobe AfterEffects6
to add breathing time between sentences.

3.2

Task: Guided Mindfulness Meditation
Courses

We selected mindfulness meditation courses from the Calm7
YouTube channel8 (738,000 subscribers). The Calm app has thehighest number of downloads and reviews in the Apple and Google
app stores [7]. Among the voice-guided meditation courses on offer,
we chose the ‘body scan’ course, which focuses on location-based
interactions [33]. The videos with at least 20 mentions of body parts
were ‘Daily Calm | 10 Minute Mindfulness Meditation | Be Present’9
and ‘30 Minute Body Scan’10 . We used the TTSs to prerecord thescript in clips for the WoZ simulation. Since Calm’s script is in English, Researcher 1 (Korean) translated it into Korean, and Researcher
2 (Japanese) translated it into Japanese. Therefore, participants wereable to listen to the instruction in their own language.

4

METHODS

We conducted a qualitative comparative user study using interviews
to capture phenomenological accounts. Participants responded to apre-study questionnaire, where they were informed of the study
goals and gave informed consent. In the study, participants laid
down on the yoga mat and meditated during Sessions 1 and 2. To
prevent the order of sessions from affecting the experience, sevenparticipants experienced Session 1 first, and seven experienced
Session 2 first. After a total of 20 minutes of meditation with theprototype, the participants answered the interview questions for
20 minutes mainly expressing their perceptions and feelings about
the experience. This study was approved by the university IRB.

4.1

Participants

The study included six Japanese men and one Korean man, andseven Korean women (mean age 24). There were three undergraduate students, six graduate students, three Ph.D. students, a researcher in a technology graduate school, and one student from abusiness school. For meditation experience, P7 meditated at least
5 LiNKFOR 4 Port Audio Switcher

6 VFX and motion graphics software, Adobe After Effects (https://www.adobe.com/

products/aftereffects.html)

7 Calm - Calm on the App Store. Retrieved September 14, 2022 from https://apps.apple.

com/us/app/calm/id571800810
8 Calm YouTube Channel – Retrieved September 14, 2022 from https://www.youtube.
com/c/calm
9 Daily Calm | 10 Minute Mindfulness Meditation | Be Present – Retrieved September
14, 2022 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v$=$ZToicYcHIOU&t$=$257s
10 30 Minute Body Scan – Retrieved September 14, 2022 from https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v$=$TPwHmaaaxLc&t$=$524s

Dis/Immersion in Mindfulness Meditation with a Wandering Voice Assistant

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

Figure 1: Two examples of body parts verbalized by the VA, which match the position of the speakers placed in the yoga mat.

Figure 2: Locations of the twelve speakers under the yoga mat (left). Participant laying down on the yoga mat (right).
once a day, P6, P8-P11, P14 meditated irregularly; P2 and P5 meditated once; and P1, P3, P4, P12, P13 never mediated before.

4.2

Data Collection and Instruments

4.2.1 Pre-Study Questionnaire. We used a Google Form to collectinformed consent and demographic information. Participants wereasked about their age, gender, and meditation experience.
4.2.2 Interview Protocol. We audio-recorded semi-structured interviews. Six Japanese participants were interviewed by Researcher
2 in Japanese. Eight Korean participants were interviewed by Researcher 1 in Korean. The starting questions were: How did you feel
about each session? What were the positive and negative points foryou? What do you think was the reason for your feelings?

4.3

Data Analysis

Interviews were transcribed. Researcher 2 translated Japanesescripts into English and Researcher 1 translated Korean scripts
into English. Then, both researchers analyzed the data in English.
Pre-study questionnaire responses on prior meditation experienceand interview reports were analyzed using an applied thematic
analysis approach [15]. For this, Researcher 1 looked for patterns
related to general experiences with the wandering VA (RQ1), differences between the typical and wandering VA embodiments (RQ2).

Codes were discussed with Researcher 3. Then, Researcher 1 and 2
independently coded a random 20% of the data. Disagreements wereresolved through discussion; in the end, all codes were accepted.
Researcher 1 then gathered the codes into themes that related to
the RQs. Both agreed on these themes.

5

FINDINGS

Participants’ phenomenological accounts generated several themes
relevant to immersion and dis-immersion with the wandering VA,
as well as other properties of the experience. Five VA embodimentfactors that affected the meditation experience were found: voicecoming from body parts, distance between ears and VA, agent
characteristics, and low familiarity. Two of these created both immersion and dis-immersion for various participants. We present
an overview of the themes in Table 1. Next, we describe in detail
how the VA embodiment factors and themes related to experiencesof dis/immersion—sometimes simultaneously—across experiences
and participants.

5.1

Easy Guidance (Immersion)

Meditation instructions such as ‘pay attention’ and ‘accept the sensations’ were difficult for non-experts (P12 and P14) to follow [25].
However, by Session 2, they had learned how to understand the

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

Bonhee Ku et al.

Table 1: Themes on how the wandering VA factors each affected dis/immersion during guided meditation.
VA Embodiment
Factors

User
Experience

Theme

Example(s)Participant(s)Voice coming frombody parts

Immersion

Easy guidance“It allowed me to focus more on the areas I wanted toconcentrate on.” (P3)Intimacy“It felt like a 1:1 class that kindly informs where I
should focus on.” (P12)“I felt like the agent is watching me doing right orwrong, so I couldn’t skip the routine.”“My concentration was broken because the location
where I was told to focus kept changing.” (P4)
“When I heard a noise from above my head, it gave me
an image that someone was talking from above, and I
did not like it.”
“It was good to understand the location because thedegree of voice was different.”“The voice was coming from afar I couldn’t understandthe content.” (P11)“I couldn’t hear the voice well on the torso side, but I
heard it well on the arm side. Like this, when the gap
between the quality of voices was severe, I lost myconcentration.” (P13)“I would have thought it would infringe on theboundaries if a person taught me that close, but since it
was a voice assistant, it was okay.”“I was not used to the moving voice system, so it wasdifficult to concentrate at first.” (P7)P2, P3, P4, P6,
P7, P8, P10, P12
P13P12, P14

Motivation
Dis-immersion

Concentration
Interfered
Unpleasant
Impressions

Distance between
ears and VA

Immersion

Easy guidanceDis-immersion

Concentration
Interference

Agentcharacteristics

Immersion

Intimacy

Low familiarity

Dis-immersion

Concentration
Interfered

abstract instructions. The moving voice not only provided information about location, but also served to lower barriers to learningand increased understanding.

5.2

P4, P5, P6, P7,
P8, P9, P10, P12
P5, P6, P13
P9P2, P6, P8, P11,
P12, P14
P2, P9, P10, P13

P14
P7, P11

so I couldn’t skip the routine.” Through this, as in the previous workwhere real-time audio, visual, or audiovisual feedback provided
motivation to keep users focused [32], a wandering VA alignedwith other factors that serve to motivate concentration.

Intimacy (Immersion)

Factors that affected intimacy between the user and the wandering
VA were ‘voice coming from body parts’ and ‘agent-characteristics.’
As P12 noted, the difference between the fixed VA and the wandering WA was the ‘[body] relationship.’ She perceived the stationary
VA as simply ‘directing’ her while the wandering VA was more of afriendly teacher giving a 1:1 lesson. Also, P14 noted that “since it isan agent, I did not mind it explaining ‘up close’ [on my body].” Thecontent of the meditation was the same for the VAs. Even so, therelative physical distance between the VA and the user mediated thepsychological distance. The physical proximity of the wandering
VA indicated a sense of ‘socially acceptable’ form of intimacy. Thissuggests that agents may be able to provide private experiencesthat are difficult for humans to do.

5.3

P14

5.4

Concentration Interference (Dis-immersion)

Many participants (P2, P9, P10, and P13) said they were disturbed
when the voice frequently moved and when the voice was too far
from their ears. Their concentration was broken when the differencein loudness caused by distance or the user’s body, e.g., ’when thelocation of the voice suddenly changed to the head when it was at
the feet’, ’when the voice was faint because it was covered by mychest, and then it was loud when at my shoulder.’“Since I can hear the voice and feel the vibration at
once, it is convenient for focusing on that body part.”(P1)

Motivation (Immersion)

For P14, in Session 1 when the voice was fixed, she did not feel
necessary to follow the instruction diligently. For instance, shefound her mind wandering and focused elsewhere when told by the
VA to focus on a specific body part. However, in Session 2, she said,“I felt like the [wandering VA] is watching me doing right or wrong,

Even so, participants (P1, P13, and P14) appreciated the tactilityof the co-located voice, i.e., the vibrations that allowed them to‘feel’ the voice and sense its ‘movements’ and position against theirbody. Still, we found that the difference in voice loudness causedby changing locations should be minimized.

Dis/Immersion in Mindfulness Meditation with a Wandering Voice Assistant

5.5

Unpleasant Impressions (Dis-immersion)

P5, P6, and P13 said that when the voice came from certain bodyparts, it was unpleasant (immersion), while for the rest, it waspleasant (immersion). P5 said ‘I hated the experience of hearing avoice from my chest . . . it felt like I was being manipulated.’ Thissuggests that people may have (non)preferences for ‘moving’ VAs
at certain locations on the body.

6

DESIGN IMPLICATIONS

We offer these initial design implications for wandering VAs createdto help users immerse themselves in guided mindfulness meditation
experiences. We highlight the factors that help immersion andreduce disturbing experiences.

6.1

Provide a Consistent Embodied Sonic
Experience

The movement of the wandering VA, which created a strong contrast in loudness, hindered concentration. Therefore, as attention
control is a key aspect of meditation [5, 12, 28], designers should
test and design the course as to whether the moving section of
wandering VA is not far and whether the loudness heard by theparticipants is consistent. Another option is to make use of thetactility of the ‘felt’ voice, which we suggest below for future work.

6.2

Provide Options for ‘Deselecting’ Body Parts

Several participants (P5, P6, P13) disliked hearing a voice at certain
body parts or movement from a certain body part to another one
located a distance away. For instance, P6 mentioned horizontal
movement made him think of it as a frequent movement that breaks
his concentration.
"When the position of the voice changed from theright shoulder to the left shoulder,I strongly felt the restlessness of the change in locationof the voice.” (P6)
Still, most (P2-P4, P7, P8, P10, P12) said that the voice comingfrom each body part allowed them to easily focus on it and complete
the meditation task. We should give users the option to ‘turn off’
guidance from certain body parts or directions. Whether this should
be done in advance or in the moment, and how, is a design question
for future work.

6.3

Greater Distance Between Voice and Body

Vibration is an element that naturally occurs from a co-locatedspeaker embedded in a medium shared with the user, in this casethe yoga mat. In this study, participants (P4, P5, P7) said they werestartled by the vibrations that resonated right under their bodies,
which disturbed their concentration. Therefore, we recommend
offering an option to move the location of the speaker close to but
not directly under the targeted body part. Thus, the designer can
provide not only information to the user through voice location,
but also reduce disturbances caused by vibration.

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

7

OPEN QUESTIONS AND PROVOCATIONSFOR FUTURE WORK

We propose several open questions for exploring the design ofwandering VA embodiments. Future work can explore these ideas
in the context of mindfulness meditation or another guided, embodied activity, in or outside of mental health care within smart
environments, to expand the potential usage of wandering VAs.

7.1

Multi-Sensory Stimulation: From Voice toVibration and Beyond

Several embodiments created both immersive and dis-immersive
experiences, sometimes at the same time. For this, we suggest devising solutions to reduce negative experiences and maximize positive
experiences. One option is to make use of multiple sensory channels, such as hearing and touch with vibrations or temperature,i.e., warmth [29]. An open question: When multiple senses are involved, what combinations help the user, and why? Also, if we canuse multiple senses to meet users’ needs, we suggest finding out
if multi-sensory approaches to wandering VA embodiments canlower the barrier to using technology for people who may haveone or more senses that are less sensitive, as well.

7.2

Familiarity and Embodiment Likeability

Some participants (P1, P4, P5 and P6) liked the fixed speaker because
they were used to it. Our question is: How much should familiarity
be considered when developing a new embodiment? Since we tend
to like things we become familiar with [3], a novel embodiment
like a wandering VA may need time and ‘mere exposure’ to become
more enjoyable.

7.3

Diversification of VA Embodiment

A single voice coming out of a single ‘body’, in this case a speaker, islike a human, as we all have one voice and one body each. However,
we have showcased a VA embodiment that is completely different
from humans. We can expand on this; for example, one voice withmultiple bodies, flying, floating, and disappearing, or perhaps multiple voices in one embodiment. We must then explore how such
VA embodiments ultimately benefit (or do not benefit) users.

8

LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE WORK

Several participants (P1, P7, P9) reported that it was difficult toanswer the interview questions based only on one experience. For
phenomenological reporting, a diary study should be conducted
to better understand users’ long-term experiences with the wandering VA, ideally in naturalistic settings, like the home. Future
work should also include people with more diverse experiences of
meditation. Also, while we believe that we achieved saturation in
our qualitative analysis [6, 26], we recognize that we had a small
sample size and a limited range of age groups. Larger and morediverse studies that incorporate both quantitative and qualitative
measures can confirm and enhance these results.

9

CONCLUSION

We are familiar with fixed VA embodiments: a voice in the smartphone in our hand or a smart speaker on a desk or living room table.

CHI EA ’23, April 23–28, 2023, Hamburg, Germany

But we can go beyond the typical form factors and contexts of use.
In our exploration of a wandering voice embedded in a yoga mat,we found that users can perceive and take delight in a wandering
VA while meditating. Some details of the wandering VA embodiment helped with immersion while others hindered immersion orwere “dis-immersive,” and some were both. We proposed several
design implications and open-ended questions for future researchon improving and expanding the purview of wandering VAs. We
hope our initial work will spur exploration on whether and how
VAs should move in sync with us.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was funded by a Japan Society for the Promotionof Science (JSPS) Grants-in-Aid for Early Career Scientists (KAKENHI WAKATE) grant (no. 21K18005), AOTULE (Asia-Oceania Top
University League on Engineering), and a JASSO (Japan Student
Services Organization) grant (no. UTA2210400901004). We also
thank the members of the Aspire Lab for their support.

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