A Review & Analysis of Mindfulness Research in HCI: Framing Current Lines of Research and Future Opportunities

Mindfulness is a term seen with increasing frequency in HCI literature, and yet the term itself is used almost as variously as the number of papers in which it appears. This diversity makes comparing or evaluating HCI approaches around mindfulness or understanding the design space itself a challenging task. We conducted a structured ACM literature search based on the term mindfulness. Our selection process yielded 38 relevant papers, which we analyzed for their definition, motivation, practice, evaluation and technology use around mindfulness. We identify similarities, divergences and areas of interest for each aspect, resulting in a framework composed of four perspectives and seven lines of research. We highlight challenges and opportunities for future HCI research and design.