Peer Reviewed

Tangible artifacts and embodied experiences are central to religious and spiritual (R/S) practices, and many HCI researchers and interaction designers highlight the importance of materiality and physicality in design. In this review paper, we bring these perspectives together and examine 44 examples of R/S tangible interactive artifacts (TIAs) from academia, art, industry, and R/S communities to understand their specifics and guide future HCI research and design. We analyze these artifacts and map out a design space for R/S TIAs by matching identified characteristics of R/S TIAs with a framework from the study of material religion. The descriptive and generative R/S TIA Design Space covers insights into bodies, things, places, practices, and backgrounds. This paper offers a novel contribution to HCI research on the value and importance of tangibility and embodiment in technology-mediated practices in R/S contexts and serves as a source for future R/S TIA creation and research.

Meditative and contemplative practices are common among U.S. adults, but the impact of digital technology use on these practices and on associated transcendent experiences is poorly understood. Through semi-structured interviews with sixteen experienced practitioners from a variety of traditions, we find that practitioners consider digital technology to be a mixed blessing. While they see its practical value, they are wary of its stimulation-based effects and find minimal usefulness in commercial meditation apps. They also feel that digital technology use may interfere with possible transcendent experiences. The practitioners, however, applied insights from their respective practices to strategically mitigate digital technology's negative effects in three ways: limiting its use to instrumental purposes, using technology interactions as grist for self-reflection, and integrating technology itself into a site for practice. Specific design recommendations are discussed.