Digital design studio ustwo best known for its mobile gaming chops is doubling down on a move into mindfulness and well-being apps in recent years, with the launch of a second interactive meditation app, called Sway.

This follows a journaling app (Moodnotes) with a cognitive behavioral therapy twist, which launched in August 2015, and a visually guided meditationexperience, called Pause, in October 2015.

All threeapps are collaborations with third partiesworking in the health and well-being space, with ustwo bringing in psychological expertise for Moodnotes via LA-based mobile app firm Thriveport, and working withDanish mental wellness company PauseAble onPause and now also with Sway.

Sway isvery much a continuation of the thinking behind Pause, which ustwo said was aiming to draw on ancient Tai Chi and mindfulness practice. That appinvolved guiding users to touch the screen of their device and move anamorphous blob around slowly as a way to slow down, relax and achieve a moment or two of calm.

With Sway, the movement element expands beyond just an on-screen movementto encompass the whole body, with users guided by on-screen instructions,music and moving visuals to focus their attention and make slow and gentle movements these can be whole-body movements or just moving the hand thats holding the phone.

Sway starts with a couple of minutes of guided swaying and gradually increases the time of each daily session until the user is clocking 20 minutes of movement per day. A series of levels are also unlocked as you progress, encouraging a range of different movements aimed at relaxing the user.

As well as displayingtext instructions to get sessions started, the screen of the Sway app is given over tosoothing visuals consisting of a generative soundscape of undulating hills in pastel-toned gradient colors that morph and change form and color whileyou moveback and forth. Users are encouraged to don headphones and soak themselves in the tranquil accompanying music.

After a few moments, the app also moves on toinstructing the userto look away from the screen so arelaxationsession can continue with aphone tucked entirely out of sight, in a pocket say, with justmusic and physical movement left.

If this is all sounding a bit too hippie for your tastes, ustwo is claiming it can back up itstheory of interactive meditation being effective for relaxation purposes, and more accessible and more effective in noisy environments than audio-guided meditations based ona series of studies it commissioned.

The basic argument being you might be able to more easily fit one of its interactive meditation sessions into, for example, your daily commuteor your office environs, where it might be harder to concentrate on a more traditional audio-guided meditation given all the distracting activity going on around you.

The studies were carried outby Professor Xiangshi Ren at the Center for Human Engaged Computing at the Kochi University of Technology in Japan, and compared ustwos earlierPause app with theaudio-guided meditation app Headspace.

However they only involved a small number of participants, and were not placebo-controlled. To date weve only focused on validating its functional effects, and not yet done any placebo-controlled trials this is something well definitely explore, saysa spokesman.

They also werent studyingthe effectiveness of Sway specifically but testing itspredecessor Pause. Albeit, ustwo is arguing both apps are essentially utilizing the same physically interactive approach to encouraging mindfulness and relaxation.

And, well, at the end of the day if an app ends up making some peoplefeel calmer because they think its helping them feel calmer its arguably doing something positive (even if not necessarily for the reasons claimed).

As with ustwos other mobile health apps, Sway which launches tomorrow will be a paid download, this time priced at$2.99.

The earlierPause app ($1.99) has had around 400,000 downloads to date, whileMoodnotes ($3.99) has clockedaround40,000 downloads on iOS, with an Android version also due to launch within weeks.

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Sway is another interactive relaxation app from ustwo | TechCrunch - TechCrunch