Project Vital Presents Spiritus: Designing a Data Supported Breath Practice for a TU Delft Student's Journey Towards Inner Peace

Project Vital Presents Spiritus: Designing a Data Supported Breath Practice for a TU Delft Student's Journey Towards Inner Peace

Abraham John, Arun (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering)

Lomas, J.D. (mentor)
Sonneveld, M.H. (graduation committee)
Van Niekerk, E.A.J. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Design for Interaction

2021-08-23

Spiritual wellbeing is an important part of human wellbeing. As the field of positive design aims to design for human well-being, how may we design for spiritual well-being? As we address this question in a secular society, an opportunity is presented by a rise in practices that were not explored by traditional western religion but are indeed known to create experiences that are regarded as spiritual. For this graduation project, I looked at breathwork following the research through design methodology for my design process. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected students in a significant manner leading to increasing accounts of stress and even burnout. To address this, the design was aimed at TU Delft students. Embodying the research through design method, the final design is Project Vital presents Spiritus. Project Vital is research platform design researchers can use to produce knowledge about breath enabled experiences of which the first research through design artifact is Spiritus. Spiritus is a data-supported breath practice aimed at guiding the students of TU Delft on their journey towards inner peace. This practice is uniquely different as participants who start the practice, start the same with an understanding of how their mind and body respond to the breath through their data. This data is comprised of electroencephalogram (EEG) data and thoracic data (Expansion/contraction of the chest). While addressing spiritual well-being directly in a secular society proved to be difficult, inner peace, a component of spiritual wellbeing, resonated with the target group. Spiritus, here while addressing the target group also produces data, which is used to further knowledge about how breath-enabled experiences can be used to promote human well-being.

Data driven design
Positive design
Design for well-being
Spirituality
Research through design

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:1b54aaf2-7144-4f0f-ad72-88a309540d20

http://www.project-vital.org This link will lead you to the website of the research platform developed during the course of this project: Project Vital The showcase for this project is the website of the research platform (www.project-vital.org). Please visit the pages of the website to come across mixed-media content to get to know more about the work.

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 Arun Abraham John