Wearable AR for Restorative Breaks: How Interactive Narrative Experiences Support Relaxation for Young People

Paper Title

Wearable AR for Restorative Breaks: How Interactive Narrative Experiences Support Relaxation for Young People

Publication Info

• Topic area: Augmented Reality (AR) for workplace well-being and restorative break design.
• Keywords: Wearable AR, restorative breaks, interactive narrative, cognitive recovery, physical activity, engagement, media integration, workplace well-being, young adults, break design.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: Current break practices among young knowledge workers often involve passive media consumption, leading to visual fatigue, physical inactivity, and insufficient recovery. Existing interventions like reminders or gamified systems fail to effectively balance engagement and restoration.
• Significance: Addressing this issue is critical for improving cognitive performance, physical well-being, and overall productivity in screen-intensive work environments.
• Motivation and related work: Prior work has explored reminder-based systems, gamified interventions, and restrictive tools, but these approaches either lack engagement, fail to motivate restorative activities, or feel intrusive. There is a gap in leveraging media's intrinsic appeal to create engaging, restorative break experiences.

Solution

• Proposed approach: InteractiveBreak, a wearable AR system that integrates narrative-driven media with guided physical activities to create seamless and restorative break experiences.
• Novelty:
  1. Introduction of a design framework for embedding lightweight physical activities into media content using AR.
  2. Development of a seamless guidance mechanism that aligns media elements with restorative actions.
  3. Implementation of a rise–peak–closure pacing strategy to balance engagement and recovery.
  4. Empirical validation of the system's effectiveness through a within-subjects study.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Conducted a three-stage co-design process: interviews to gather expectations, a design probe study to identify requirements, and iterative prototyping.
  • Developed a design framework with components like audio-centric media, seamless guidance units (SGUs), and session orchestration.
  • Evaluated the InteractiveBreak prototype against three baselines: passive video watching, reminder-based breaks, and interactive non-narrative activities.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • InteractiveBreak achieved the highest ratings for seamless transitions (M=6.00/7), overall break quality (M=5.63/7), and work readiness (M=5.75/7).
  • Participants reported stronger mental detachment (M=5.75/7), physical relaxation (M=5.50/7), and post-break productivity (M=5.56/7) compared to baselines.
  • 11 out of 16 participants preferred InteractiveBreak for long-term use.
• Advantage over baselines:
  • Outperformed passive video watching in reducing visual fatigue and promoting physical activity.
  • Surpassed reminder-based systems in engagement and perceived rest quality.
  • Provided more sustained novelty and motivation than interactive non-narrative approaches.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Within-subjects study with 16 participants across four conditions (passive video, reminder-based, interactive non-narrative, InteractiveBreak).
  • Measures included seamlessness, engagement, restorative quality, and long-term adaptability.
  • Conducted in a semi-public workspace using AR glasses with standardized media content.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Limited by AR hardware constraints (e.g., field of view, weight).
  • Fixed break schedules may not reflect real-world variability.
  • Short-term evaluation; long-term adherence and novelty decay remain untested.
  • Future work should explore diverse media genres, adaptive designs, and extended deployments.

Summary

This paper introduces InteractiveBreak, a wearable AR system that transforms passive media consumption into engaging and restorative break experiences through narrative-driven guidance and physical activities. The system leverages a design framework emphasizing seamless media integration and calibrated engagement, validated through a within-subjects study with 16 participants. Results show significant improvements in break quality, engagement, and post-break readiness compared to traditional and interactive baselines. While promising, further research is needed to address hardware limitations, real-world variability, and long-term adoption. This work highlights AR's potential to enhance workplace well-being by embedding restorative activities into everyday media experiences.