Self-Reflecting and Mindfulness: Cultivating Curiosity and Decentering Situated in Everyday Life Ralph Vacca ( ✉ ) and Christopher Hoadley Educational Communication and Technology, New York University, New York, USA {ralph.vacca,tophe}@nyu.edu Abstract. Research on the use of mobile to promote mindfulness states is still rela‐ tively nascent, especially when exploring how such states can be cultivated in everyday life, outside of meditation-based approaches. In this study we investigate the design of a mobile app that seeks to cultivate mindfulness states situated in everyday life. Using reminders to prompt self-reflection and breathing exercises to prompt body awareness, we sought to address the overarching question – how can we design towards mindfulness situated in everyday living and how might it change what we mean by mindfulness? Our findings suggest that mobile-based approaches can promote curiosity and decentering through self-reflection, and that the valence and likelihood of experiencing certain mental events may influence how self-reflection is experienced, which in turn influences curiosity and decentering factors of mind‐ fulness states. Keywords: Mindfulness · Situated context · Self-reflection · Curiosity · Decentering · Emotional health · Persuasive design · Mobile learning 1 Introduction Traditionally, mindfulness focuses on complete freedom from suffering and cultivating positive qualities of the mind characterized by a state of altruistic omniscience. Wester‐ nized adoption of mindfulness is largely removed from the spiritual origins and focused on the therapeutic benefits – happiness and wellness. Despite these differences, both share a characterization of mindfulness as a transient state of non-appraisal in which mental experiences and sensory information are meta-cognitively monitored without evaluation or interpretation [1, 2]. Furthermore, both share a view of mindfulness training as a cultivation of dispositional traits that eventually will impact all aspects of one’s everyday life [3]. Building on the momentum of the quantified-self and persuasive technology move‐ ment is the opportunity to use mobile devices to support mindfulness as a practice that is situated in everyday life. Mobility is increasingly being understood as the mediation of one’s relationship with situated contexts such as location and those around us [4]. The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at 10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_31 © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016 A. Meschtscherjakov et al. (Eds.): PERSUASIVE 2016, LNCS 9638, pp. 87–98, 2016. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-31510-2_8