RESonance: Lightweight, Room-Scale Audio-Visual Biofeedback for Immersive Relaxation Training

Abstract

Biofeedback systems enable the users' awareness of their internal health status by displaying their physiological signal, and further facilitate them to move toward self-regulation and behavior change. Single-modal biofeedback display can provide clear yet less engaging physiological information; a multimodal, immersive display could provide more engaging user experiences, but such a biofeedback system is relatively difficult to deploy. To strike a balance between engagement and ease of deployment, we present RESonance, a lightweight, immersive audio-visual biofeedback system for relaxation training. The system informs the users about their internal states (i.e., breath and heart rate variability) through ambient mediums, i.e., ambient light and nature soundscape, which can be provided by a lightweight infrastructure. The results of a 24-participant user study suggest that the system not only efficiently supports breathing regulation in relaxation training but also offers immersive and engaging user experiences.

Keywords

• Biofeedback
• relaxation training
• audio-visual interface
• ambient light
• nature soundscape
• immersive experience