DigitalOmmie: Adapting Calm Design from Social Robots to Digital Replicas to Reduce Momentary Anxiety

This paper investigates how principles of calm interaction, originally embodied in a social physical robot, can be translated into a smartphone-based breathing app for momentary anxiety reduction. We first conducted an exploratory survey (n = 18) to identify which features from a social robot are most desirable for a digital version of it, followed by a laboratory study (n = 16, including 8 participants with lived experiences of anxiety) to evaluate the effectiveness of the digital replication in reducing momentary anxiety. Findings show that interacting with DigitalOmmie significantly reduced momentary anxiety in the anxiety cohort, though responses to haptic feedback varied: vibration was described as calming by some but stressful by others. Audiovisual cues and a streamlined flow were experienced as motivating and calming. Overall, our work illustrates the potential and challenges of adapting embodied calm design from social physical robots to mobile applications and offers insights for the design of future mobile health technologies.