Högskolan i Skövde

Practicing breathing exercises isn’t very engaging thou it is seen as great for well-being. Applications can utilize breath as a controller mechanism for interactions. With virtual reality (VR) being an effective tool for inducing the sense of immersion and presence, a breathing exercise was paired up with three alternative sessions in an application that was developed to examine the differences between mimicking and controlling input during an experience in VR, with the baseline of interaction being that of no other controllers but head-orientation-tracking of the VR device. Two pilot tests were performed to evaluate functionality and procedure. The main tests investigated the case of research. It was possible to identify mimicking as an immersive experience that promoted the breathing exercise, while input was more immersive but less beneficial towards performing the breathing exercise. The study was also conducted with- and addresses some design limitations of commonly accessible hardware.