Grounding Mindfulness in Embodied Tangibles: A Scoping Review & Theoretical Framework for HCI Design
Embodied and tangible devices are increasingly used to support mindfulness practices across meditation, yoga, and everyday routines. However, existing HCI research lacks a coherent theoretical foundation for explaining how such systems support distinct mindfulness processes and outcomes. First, we report findings from a scoping review of tangible devices (n=65) for mindfulness in HCI based on the mechanisms of action of mindfulness. The review found that most systems primarily target attentional regulation and body awareness, while emotion regulation and change in perspective on the self remain comparatively underexplored. Also, the evaluation methods used to assess the effectiveness of tangible systems for mindfulness-related outcomes were found to be fragmented and weakly grounded in theory. Building on these findings, a theoretical framework grounded in the Self-Awareness, Self-Regulation, and Self-Transcendence (S-ART) framework is proposed to explain how tangible systems support different forms of mindfulness practice. Within the framework, we present two complementary models: (1) Embodied Sensory Expansion (ESE) for focused-attention meditation (FAM) and (2) Embodied Sensory Anchoring (ESA) for open-monitoring meditation (OMM). Together, we show how this framework can provide a principled basis for explaining designs, generating hypotheses, and evaluating tangible mindfulness technologies in HCI, while highlighting key gaps for future research.