Human-Centered Design for Individual and Social Well-being: Editorial Preface

As digital technology use becomes widespread, its unintended consequences ranging from personal health to societal righteousness are under more scrutiny. Increasingly, digital designers are accused of not being considerate enough of the depth of their creations, and their impacts on our well-being. In this special issue, we explore an alternative, genuinely human-centered approach to technology design focusing on well-being and making our interactions with digital technology more meaningful, purposeful, and sustainable. To this end, the editorial starts with a brief review of the history of research that led to the growing field of digital well-being. We then introduce the Digital Well-being Design Framework, which goes beyond the ego-centric approach in human-centered design, and is multi-layered with self (intrapersonal), social (interpersonal), and transcendent (extra-personal) levels. Similar topics in related AIS journals are summarized, followed by the application of our framework to introduce and position the papers in this special issue. Our special issue aims to bring the topic of digital well-being to the forefront of the information systems research community and launch a new era of genuinely human-centered design

Setting the relationship between human-centered approaches and users? Digital well-being: A review

With the advancement of technology and advent of the new digital era, the society is getting increasingly exposed to novel technologies, digital platforms, or smart devices. This reality opens a wide range of questions about the benefits and challenges of technology and its impact on humans. In this context, the present study investigates the relationship between human-centered approaches and their application to achieve users' digital well-being, as well as explores whether marketing and business industry are sufficiently considering human-centered approaches in their implementation of practices that care for users' digital wellbeing. To this end, we conduct a systematic literature review. The exploratory results confirm that the implementation of human-centered approaches makes it possible to achieve a greater user well-being in the marketing and management sector. Additionally, we also identify and dis-cuss seven more relevant areas. Our review concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for further research on the use of human-centric and digital well-being concepts.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Digital Wellbeing for All: Expanding Inclusivity to Embrace Diversity in Socio-Emotional Status

The ubiquity of information and communication technology contributed positively in enhancing lives, mainly in increasing productivity and economic growth, while their impact on life satisfaction and wellbeing has been a hidden cost. Digital media shall empower users to maximise their digital wellbeing, i.e. healthy and regulated relationship with technology. Similar to usability, people differ in their needs to achieve and maintain their digital wellbeing. A technology design shall be inclusive in how it helps users to increase their digital wellbeing and reduce possible harm. Typical inclusivity dimensions in Human-Computer Interaction research include gender, race, physical and cognitive abilities, with the aim of making the product usable by the wider possible user set. However, another range of inclusivity dimensions becomes prominent and that is the diversity in users' socio-emotional characteristics such as susceptibility to online pressure (technical and social), resilience and others. Such characteristics can be traits, e.g. introversion, or temporal status, e.g. being in a low mood. In this position paper, we are proposing digital wellbeing as a target for an inclusive design where technology designers need to anticipate and reduce the negative impact of their products and services on the wellbeing of users through considering their diverse socio-emotional status

Mapping the Scope of Software Interventions for Moderate Internet Use on Mobile Devices

ICT is expected to form 21% of global electricity demand in 2030, and history has shown that efficiency gains in Internet infrastructure aiming to curtail such impacts are far outstripped by the growth in data traffic. We need to reduce demand for Internet connectivity, yet encouraging moderate interactions with digital devices and online services could potentially benefit users. HCI designs have been suggested for moderate interactions and Internet usage, most commonly on smartphones - but it's currently unclear whether these interventions can actually be implemented and tested to understand the user and environmental impacts. In this paper, we review features for understanding and manipulating data traffic in accordance with the stock Android and iOS development libraries to better scope the potential for implementing moderate and sustainable digital experiences. Specifically, we outline the intervention features plausible for Android implementation, and we provide reasoning for why iOS is currently too restrictive

Understanding and mitigating the impact of Internet demand in everyday life

Digital devices and online services are increasingly embedded within our everyday lives. The growth in usage of these technologies has implications for environmental sustainability due to the energy demand from the underlying Internet infrastructure (e.g. communication networks, data centres). Energy efficiencies in the infrastructure are important, but they are made inconsequential by the sheer growth in the demand for data. We need to transition users’ Internet-connected practices and adapt HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) design in less demanding and more sustainable directions. Yet it’s not clear what the most data demanding devices and online activities are in users’ lives, and how this demand can be intervened with most effectively through HCI design. In this thesis, the issue of Internet demand is explored—uncovering how it is embedded into digital devices, online services and users’ everyday practices. Specifically, I conduct a series of experiments to understand Internet demand on mobile devices and in the home, involving: a large-scale quantitative analysis of 398 mobile devices; and a mixed-methods study involving month-long home router logging and interviews with 20 participants (nine households). Through these studies, I provide an in-depth understanding of how digital activities in users’ lives augment Internet demand (particularly through the practice of watching), and outline the roles for the HCI community and broader stakeholders (policy makers, businesses) in curtailing this demand. I then juxtapose these formative studies with design workshops involving 13 participants; these discover how we can reduce Internet demand in ways that users may accept or even want. From this, I provide specific design recommendations for the HCI community aiming to alleviate the issue of Internet growth for concerns of sustainability, as well as holistically mitigate the negative impacts that digital devices and online services can create in users’ lives

Exploring and Designing Embodied Mindfulness-based Interactive Technologies For Mental Wellbeing

Mindfulness practices have become increasingly popular due to their significant benefits for mental wellbeing. However, the required skills to sustain and regulate attention are challenging to develop. Both the benefits and the challenges of mindfulness training have attracted a growing Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) interest in designing interactive technologies for mindfulness. Most mindfulness-based technologies employ metaphorical mappings of mindfulness states to support awareness of such states and facilitate attention regulation, although the rationale for such mappings is seldom articulated. This thesis addresses this shortcoming, drawing on first-person experiences and embodied metaphors of mindfulness practices to design novel multi-sensory technologies for mental wellbeing. This work concentrates on focused attention mindfulness (FAM) practices which involve sustaining selective attention moment by moment on a chosen object, and are considered the most widely accessible among novices. In particular, the research presented in this thesis is structured around two distinct FAM practices, in 6 different but interrelated studies. On the one hand, mandala colouring illustrates a nonstatic FAM practice with an external object of attention. On the other hand, sitting meditation represents a static FAM practice with an internal object of attention. The first and second study investigate in-depth mandala colouring, respectively, by interviewing 21 people who regularly engage with this practice and through an autoethnographic and heuristic evaluation of the 14 top-ranked mandala colouring apps. Findings informed the development of Anima, a peripheral colour palette materialising EEG-based mindfulness states onto colours for mandala colouring. In the third study, Anima’s design solutions were evaluated with 12 experienced participants. The fourth study follows a research-through design and material speculation approach to understand the role of body during meditation with 24 experts. This is extended in the fifth study, in which the 16 most popular meditation apps are evaluated through auto-ethnography. An identified opportunity of designing for the physical sensations that arise during meditation was considered through the design of the WarmMind, that provide warmth patterns on the upper body. The WarmMind prototype was evaluated in the fifth study, through a user study with 10 participants experiencing thermal metaphors for mapping meditation states on the upper-body. Besides the technological design contributions of Anima and WarmMind, the contributions of this thesis include the concepts of intricate confines to scaffold mindful movement to support non-static FAM practices with an external object of attention, and interoceptive interaction to facilitate focusing inwards during meditation to support static FAM practices with an internal object of attention; as well as a framework built on embodied metaphor theories to designing meditation technologies. Collectively, these studies highlight the value of the human body in mindfulness-based technologies in HCI, as well as theoretical and methodological contributions to designing around mindfulness for mental wellbeing in HCI