Neema Moraveji · Stanford University
Designing Calming Technology

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Stress silently but steadily damages physical and psychological wellbeing, relationships, productivity, and our ability to learn and remember. Stress is often thought to be exasperated by interactive technology but the Calming Technology Lab challenges this assumption by designing and evaluating techniques for designing experiences and interactions that either mitigate known stressors or induce calm. The output of the lab are both novel interactive systems but also heuristics and frameworks for designers and researchers to reduce stressors in their work. In this talk, I will discuss the emerging field of calming technology and dive deep into Breathwear, a means of augmenting one's own ability to regulate respiratory patterns to reduce anxiety and increase a sense of presence and calm.

Neema Moraveji runs the Calming Technology Lab at Stanford University. His defended his Ph.D., "Augmented Self-Regulation", in 2011. He teaches "d.compress: Designing Calm" at the dschool and his work has been covered in the NY Times. Prior to Stanford he led the Asia Center for Interaction Design at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing, China. Dr. Moraveji received his B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland at College Park's HCI Lab and his M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University's HCI Institute. @calmingtech, @moraveji