Urge surfing with haptic feedback
This article describes research that informed how Habit Bandz was designed. It is not a claim about treatment efficacy, and Habit Bandz does not diagnose or treat any condition.
What is urge surfing?
Urge surfing is a mindfulness strategy: notice an urge, ride it out like a wave, and avoid reacting automatically. Haptics are touch-based feedback — in this case, gentle vibration from a phone or watch.
Why do haptics help?
Urges often feel automatic and hard to name. Research on haptic feedback and interoception suggests that making bodily signals more perceptible can support attention to the present moment and self-regulation. A physical cue can create a short pause — long enough to notice the sensation instead of acting on it.
How Habit Bandz fits
In practice it feels like this: the urge to pick rises while you're scrolling in bed. You press and hold, and the pulse under your fingertips gives you one concrete physical sensation to attend to — the vibration, your grip, your breathing. That felt sensation is the cue back into the moment, and the urge crests and passes while your attention is anchored in your body.
Habit Bandz uses calming vibration as a grounding cue, not as a distraction or an alarm. The design intent is to return attention to the body while the urge rises, crests, and falls — turning a reflexive moment into a conscious one. That is why the interaction is a sustained tap-and-hold rather than a notification. You can get started with Habit Bandz on iPhone or Apple Watch.
Who it's for
Anyone practicing mindfulness-based urge management, and clinicians who teach urge surfing and want clients to have a physical anchor for it.
Sources
- Azevedo, R.T., Bennett, N., Bilicki, A., Hooper, J., Markopoulou, F., & Tsakiris, M. (2017). The calming effect of a new wearable device during the anticipation of public speech. Scientific Reports, 7, 2285.
- Miri, P., et al. (2020). Evaluating a Personalizable, Inconspicuous Vibrotactile (PIV) Breathing Pacer for In-the-Moment Affect Regulation. Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems.
- Fani, N., et al. (2023). Neurophysiological changes associated with vibroacoustically-augmented breath-focused mindfulness for dissociation: targeting interoception and attention. Psychological Medicine.
- SomaSync — MIT Media Lab project on haptic bodily feedback.