Sinhala traditional music of Sri Lanka for stress relief: an interaction design intervention

Abstract

Stress is one of the utmost heard words in today's world. Developing unnecessary stress over a prolonged time could become chronic. With this fast pace, the time has become a decisive factor in each one’s life. Thus, people spare less time engaging in relaxation activities. They seek out for alternative ways such as using mobile apps which adopt different modes of relaxation. When focusing into the local context, Sinhala traditional music of Sri Lanka was one of the most used modes of relaxation for the people in the past. Now it is rarely practiced. In the pilot study revealed that Sri Lankan traditional modes of relaxation are not present among the developed mobile apps and HCI based interactions for stress relief. Therefore, this study was aimed to fill the gap between existing HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) based stress relief modes and the application of Sri Lankan Traditional Knowledge which is fast fading. Investigating the possibilities of adapting Sinhala Traditional Music of Sri Lanka into HCI application was the primary aim of this study. Objectives of the research were acquired by following a mixed method approach. To select the subjects for the study convenience sampling method was used. In phase one of the experimental studies, it revealed that relaxation response towards Sinhala traditional music was high compared to other proven relaxation music modes. The possibilities of using emotional Inputs that could be fed into an Interactive system design was observed in the in-depth experimental study. This attempt, forecasted potential areas to be researched further. Also, further study should be done to validate whether these findings can be generalized which was not concerned in this study. Moreover, this study could be extended to develop an affective and emotional interaction design that could facilitate young adults of Sri Lanka.