Playing with my Breath

Hello I’m Olivier Janin, I’m working at Ubisoft in France and for years I’ve been realizing that sometimes I’m so stressed that I can’t perform at my best, I lose my self-control and I can’t enjoy my life fully.

So, five years ago when Sebastian, a good friend of mine was working at Ubisoft talk to me about biofeedback, breathing training exercises which could relax the user, and I told him let’s try to design it, and I could be the first user.

So we worked under the guidance of Doctor Frederick Kochman with a specialist, an expert into stress issues. We first reframed the stress quantification itself, for that we designed and incremental psychological system which allows us to refine the user’s stress evaluation at the time to deliver in the most appropriate questions regarding his own life.

So during the months that we tested the database with 600 questions which quantified the four impact of stress; on the body, the mind, emotions, and behavior. Our intention was to create a playful way of answering the questionnaires.

Coming from the digital entertainment industry, we achieved to design an emotional avatar engine. It tells the user like a psychological mirror, it tells the user to refine the answers to match with his own perception of himself.

The third objectives was the hardware. We developed a very precise sensor that was able of sensing each of your heart beats and monitoring your heart rate viability.

On this technology my daily stress calculation combines both my physiological analysis and my psychological evaluation.

After long months of playing it, teach me a lot about my stress and about myself. I quit smoking one year ago, and the game showed me how it turned myself upside down. The most ironic thing about how stressful it was to develop this game, I had serious back pain at the beginning of the year, but fortunately my mind straight strong and the game showed it to me.

But O.Zen is not only a stress evaluation software, it has also provided me with a solution. Thanks to its sensor accuracy, O.Zen guides me in the best breathing patterns that calculated and computed for me directly in the software.

There are two main breathing activities in the game. The breathing trainings from 1 to 5 minutes long, the whimsical biotic display is far from classical medical monitoring, and it gives me a clear vision of the adaptive training of my breath. So we tried to design O.Zen to turn these physiological signals into poetic art.

The second type of activities are games, these challenge and gauge my breathing activities, while at the same time asking me to keep control over my stress. What is great is here. I play with my own physiological signals, and it gives me fun with a purpose; to control me better, to live better, feel better, and to lead better. The breath is the controller of the game.

So finally, how did O.Zen impact my own life? This daily bit of my time to track my stress helped me to manage it better and as soon I breathe well I feel real benefit. In two or three days, feeling my daily breathing gauge I feel more clear minded, more focused, more in control and in sync with myself and with my environment. It even affected me outside of the game; I get the reflex of breathing at any time.

In the morning when I drive my motorbike to go to work I listened to my breath inside my helmet, so I definitely improved my stress development ability. Thanks to this game. I increase my overall performances and my everyday well-being.

So with O.Zen I am more myself, so thank you for your attention. I would be glad to make you a demo at our booth. Enjoy the show, and please do not forget to breathe.