Author: Vicky Chen

 
In the fast paced, constantly changing world, anxiety seems to have become an indispensable part of a lot of people’s everyday life. We may think that anxiety and stress are normal feelings, however, it could actually interfere with our normal activities and relationships in a destructive way if not being paid enough attention at the first place. Therefore, it is necessary for people to release the tensions in time once they feel that the stress is becoming too overwhelming.
JING is an interactive finger destressing studio where users can enjoy a five-minute interactive mudra session to relieve themselves from stress. A mudra is a symbolic or ritual gesture that is commonly used in yoga practices. Most of the mudra gestures are performed with only the hands and fingers. The purpose of this project is to provide the users with a rather relaxing experience that involves both hearing, visual senses, finger gestures into the interaction process. Users will start off by seeing a short introduction of Jing and then place their hands above the Leap Motion as instructed to perform the mudra gestures shown on screen. Users are asked to fit their fingers into the circles on screen and once the Leap Motion detects that they are doing the gestures correctly, it will automatically start to play a short piece of music. According to mudra, each finger represents different natural elements, thus for each gesture, there will be a short sound track of different natural sounds like fire, rain, birds chirping, etc. Users will need to hold the gesture for 1 minute before jumping to the next one. By moving their hands back and forth, left and right around the Leap Motion, they can play with the sound track by changing its rate and amplitude. JING also owns a futuristic aesthetics with a space travelling background video playing throughout the whole process and a geode-like visual effect that displays hand gestures real-time on screen, which creates a sense of alienation from the reality and helps the users to better immerse themselves to the experience.
Different from the existing destressing devices like meditation mobile apps and interactive yoga studios, JING would focus more on how the interactions between the users and the project could help users to destress with minimum space and time requirements but a more immersive experience with music and visual effects. Comparing to meditation mobile apps, JING added more interactive elements into the destressing process. Researches have shown that when people are under extreme stress and pressure, it is difficult for them to distract their attentions from what is currently bothering them to fully focus on the meditation or yoga session. Thus, with the little “distractions” of the visual and music effects, users are able to switch their focus to the five-minute mudra journey. Also, comparing to interactive yoga studios, JING would stand out with its convenience for its relatively low space requirements, since the session would only involve the usage of hands and fingers.
In all, JING combines both elements from yoga and meditation into the interactive process of destressing. Through doing the mudra gestures as well as playing with the music and visual effects, users are able to fully relax themselves for five minutes.