Helping beginning meditators to see the benefits of their meditation!

1. Dita: a Guide for
Beginning Meditators
Harry Wray, Charlie Yang, and Eric
Hermann

2. HMW: Use Spire to show people
immediate results of their meditation?
● Users wanted feedback
on how meditation was
helping them
● Otherwise, meditation
induced uncertainty &
anxiety

3. SBTM: Increase breath length during
and after daily meditation

4. Prototype 1: SMS Feedback

5. Prototype 2: Dita

6. A user’s story
Robert is a EE major but also taking a bunch of CS classes.
He has a final project which he needs to finish, but he knows it
will take over 2 weeks of working non-stop. Robert has done a
little taiqi, and wants to meditate to relieve the anxiety that’s
getting in the way of being productive.
But he’s not sure if it works. So he started using Dita, knowing
he’d get direct feedback and see the progress he’s making
over time.
http://youtu.be/ePeWLCOI2CM

7. Trial Design
● Two beginning
meditators for ~8
days each
● Received daily
reminders as well as
feedback

8. Results
● One user missed 2 out of the 8 days. Other missed none
● Both users state their intention to continue meditating!
Affirmative
● “I feel like I finally got over the hump, thanks to a small push in the right direction
from Dita!”
● “Dita’s feedback made me confident my meditation was working. And I’m already
feeling the benefits.”
Negative
● “Length of breath was a weird thing to measure, but it gave me something to focus
on while I meditated”
● “Even though the data told me I was taking longer and longer breaths every day... it
was still uncomfortable and distracting to focus on taking really deep breaths while
meditating”

9. NOI: Finding the right trigger is key!
● Lots of iteration
● Needed to be simple
and easy to use, but
powerful enough to
encourage behavior
● Only needed to last
about 10 days

10. Next Steps
● Develop an
automated SMS
system that responds
dynamically to users
● Scale up!
● Follow users on a
longer timetable