A stressful society with a deficiency of attention has led to a growing demand for meditation techniques. One meditation technique is mindfulness, which is a tool used to reduce stress, intensify body awareness and to help us be more present. However, as mindfulness requires extensive training and dedication, many beginners may decide to quit practicing in the initial phase and may risk not ever experiencing the benefits of body awareness. Previous studies indicate that technology is often blamed for the deficiency of attention. Therefore, this study addresses the possibilities to design technology for sustained attention. More precisely, the study aims to investigate what potential possibilities wearable haptic technology has in enabling body awareness in body scan meditation in mindfulness. It also aims to explore how beginners in mindfulness experience the use of wearable haptic technology in body scan meditation. The study explores these problems by combining research through design and action research, with three phases of iteration, resulting in the design, implementation and evaluation of the wearable prototype HeatCue with haptic thermal feedback. The study implies that HeatCue provides an intimate, subtle and skin-close interaction, suitable for the context of body scan mediation. The results indicate that wearable haptic technology with thermal feedback holds the possibility to enable body awareness in body scan meditation through acting as a reminder for the body part where the feedback is applied, a reference for the rest of the body as well as encouragement. Furthermore, the study shows that wearable haptic technology is beneficial in evoking emotions and interest. The study also indicates some key aspects when designing for body awareness, namely; subtlety and interplay of the feedback, a secluded environment and an understanding that each individual is different. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of designing for body awareness and to new knowledge in the field of wearable haptic technology with thermal feedback and techno-spirituality in human-computer interaction

The human body possesses a highly developed range of senses that help orienting oneself in everyday life. Especially when it comes to navigating, perceiving and reacting to the world around us, people tend to rely mostly on their vision and hearing. Suffering from an impairment of either one, or both of the predominating senses means having to counterbalance this constraint. People suffering from blindness and deaf-blindness compensate their impairment mainly by relying on their haptic perception. In this case, information is usually communicated by braille or vibrotactile means. To offer another non-visual and non-audial communication concept this thesis work introduces, the thermal textile pixels. A thermal textile pixel consists of an external thermal device, able to generate hot and cold thermal impulses, and a textile interface to transmit the signal. In order to design such thermal textile pixel it was crucial to be aware of the thermal transfer occurring through and within an textile. Numerous research studies have examined the thermal properties of textiles, especially in the context of clothing comfort, thermal comfort. Nevertheless, it should be considered that as a thermal textile pixel, the textile forms part of a system, governed by many parameters. Therefore, for designing such a device it is important to be aware of the temporal and spatial resolution of the thermal transmitted signal. These characteristics are influenced by multiple textile parameters. For this purpose, a thermal study has been performed investigating in- and out-of-plane signal transmission by textiles in combination with an external thermal device. Using an external thermal device such as a Peltier element allowed to expose the specimens to heating as well as to active cooling. Different knitted structures and material combinations have been examined to gain a first impression on the behaviour of thermal pixels. It was found that thickness and density were the most influential factors for out-of-plane heat transfer. In-plane was found influenced mainly by fibre conductivity. An anisotropic behaviour was noted in-plane, as well as between in- and out-of-plane for heat transfer. Investigating active cooling signals, it was found that a significant decline of performance was noted for all specimens. Plain PA was found to be most suitable for the transmission of heat signals. But did not perform equally well during active cooling phases. Plain Shieldex was observed to perform most steady during heating and active cooling.