Design for Wellbeing at Scale

A special issue of Multimodal Technologies and Interaction (ISSN 2414-4088).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2022) | Viewed by 11221

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Interests: human-technology Interaction; human-centred design; user experience; design for well-being

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Guest Editor
Stuttgart Media University, Nobelstraße 10, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany
Interests: human-centred design; positive user experience; design for wellbeing at work; positive psychology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Microsoft Research, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, UK
Interests: interaction design; machine learning; digital mental health

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Technology has the power to influence psychological wellbeing for better or for worse and to do so at scale. The pervasive changes to work, school and daily life brought about by a global pandemic have further clarified the critical importance of technologies to our wellbeing, including the role they play in how we find connection, meaning and balance in our lives.  It also brought to light issues related to digital divide, and to access to, and sustainability of, technologies. As such, owing to the ubiquity of technologies across demographic lines, design has the potential to deploy benefits at unprecedented scale. However, doing so requires research into ways this can be done effectively.

For this article collection we will bring together research exploring how interactive design can contribute to sustained wellbeing in meaningful ways.  As such, we invite papers from all facets of design for wellbeing, including design for resilience, transformation, positive experiences, psychological needs, life satisfaction, quality of life, positive emotions and harmony.

We especially encourage research studies (e.g. experimental studies, case studies, qualitative studies, etc.) that can contribute to evidence of the impact on wellbeing of proposed methods, frameworks, and design interventions.

We welcome applications to a wide range of domains, including workplace wellbeing, resilience in isolated or extreme environments, wellbeing in daily life and support for psychological health within physical health contexts, among others.

Emphasis is on a holistic notion of user experience (UX) which goes well beyond usability of technologies or designed systems, to consider design for emotional experience as well as balanced and sustained wellbeing. 

By specifying wellbeing at scale, we refer to the capacity for digital technologies to have particularly broad or specialised reach. This might refer to design for the population at large, for a specific community, for a school or workplace, or into daily life.

This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed up until March 2022.

Topics

  • Design for Psychological Wellbeing, digital wellbeing, and quality of life
  • Design for Resilience, transformation, and harmony
  • Workplace wellbeing
  • Design for positive emotions and meaning
  • Positive design/technology/computing
  • (Smart) material design for wellbeing
  • Wellbeing in stressful and extreme environments (eg. frontline workers, isolated workplaces, carers, etc.)
  • Design to address loneliness and isolation, in lockdown and beyond
  • Design for connection/relatedness/relationships
  • Design for equity of access and accessibility in relation to psychological wellbeing
  • Wellbeing supportive design as responsible design

Dr. Naseem Ahmadpour
Prof. Dr. Michael Burmester
Dr. Anja Thieme
Guest Editors

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Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

18 pages, 2483 KiB  
Article
Identifying and Addressing Needs of Heterogeneous User Groups—A Case Study from the Banking Sector
by Kathrin Pollmann, Doris Janssen, Nora Fronemann, Milena Velić, Philippe Bouillé, Béatrice Foucault and Nathalie Bégoc Bécam
Multimodal Technol. Interact. 2022, 6(12), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/mti6120103 - 23 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1711
Abstract
Adopting a need-based approach can help companies to create products and services that are preferred by their customers and improve their well-being, thus providing a competitive advantage. To put need-based designs into practice, it would be interesting to know how innovative product and [...] Read more.
Adopting a need-based approach can help companies to create products and services that are preferred by their customers and improve their well-being, thus providing a competitive advantage. To put need-based designs into practice, it would be interesting to know how innovative product and service ideas can address the needs of a specific target group in a specific business domain. This paper presents an approach for (a) identifying such target group-specific need sets based on an online survey and (b) integrating them into the company’s innovation processes as part of a Need-based Creativity Workshop. To illustrate and validate this approach, we present a case study that investigates varying need subsets for two different user groups of future banking products and services in France: adults with and without families. Our study shows that a different set of needs is important for each group and reflects upon the benefits and challenges of a target group-specific, need-based design approach to leverage a company’s potential for innovation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Design for Wellbeing at Scale)
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17 pages, 1476 KiB  
Article
Designing Positive Experiences in Creative Workshops at Work Using a Warm UP Set Based on Psychological Needs
by Anne Elisabeth Krueger and Sarah Minet
Multimodal Technol. Interact. 2022, 6(10), 90; https://doi.org/10.3390/mti6100090 - 13 Oct 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 4087
Abstract
With working from home becoming more normalized, creative workshops are increasingly taking place in digital and hybrid form. However, participants are usually less engaged and motivated in these contexts. This is due to less physical presence and activity, complex technical systems and a [...] Read more.
With working from home becoming more normalized, creative workshops are increasingly taking place in digital and hybrid form. However, participants are usually less engaged and motivated in these contexts. This is due to less physical presence and activity, complex technical systems and a lack of social interaction and communication. This leaves the facilitators with the challenge that these creative workshops are sometimes not experienced as positively, and therefore participants are not able to work as creatively. An important approach that can strengthen these factors in workshops is the use of warm-ups as a type of playful intervention. Although some research on and compilations of warm-ups exist and may help the situation, they do not yet provide direction on how to specifically promote a positive experience in creative workshops with warm-ups. An important link here is user experience research, which assumes that positive experiences are due to the fulfilment of psychological needs. Based on research about warm-ups and playful interventions in general, we derive categories for classifying warm-ups that can potentially address several specific psychological needs. Then, 28 warm-ups are selected according to their applicability in analogue, digital and hybrid application spaces. Moreover, those 28 warm-ups are assigned to the two most relevant classifying categories. The results are mapped in the form of a ready-to-use Warm UP Set, which is then evaluated for applicability from the facilitators’ perspective and regarding the influence on the emotional experience of the participants. The evaluation shows that the developed Warm UP Set with its categories seems to be suitable to support facilitators in systematically inducing positive experiences in participants in creative workshops. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Design for Wellbeing at Scale)
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31 pages, 25626 KiB  
Article
Wellbeing at Work—Emotional Impact on Workers Using a Worker Guidance System Designed for Positive User Experience
by Magdalena Laib, Christina Haspel, Christopher Stockinger, Lucas Polanski-Schräder, Philipp Dücker, Kristian Voll, Patrizia Schiffrer and Michael Burmester
Multimodal Technol. Interact. 2022, 6(10), 87; https://doi.org/10.3390/mti6100087 - 12 Oct 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2046
Abstract
Wellbeing at work can be achieved through different strategies; designing for a positive user experience (UX) is one way. However, the relationship between wellbeing and professionally used technology is rather unexplored, especially in work areas that are far from desktop work such as [...] Read more.
Wellbeing at work can be achieved through different strategies; designing for a positive user experience (UX) is one way. However, the relationship between wellbeing and professionally used technology is rather unexplored, especially in work areas that are far from desktop work such as worker guidance systems (WGSs) used in assembly processes. In this paper, we first described a qualitative evaluation (using the valence method) of a prototype WGS designed for a positive UX. The evaluation showed that it elicited far more positive than negative feelings. Based on the results, we improved and redesigned the prototype. We then implemented it in a realistic setting and quantitatively compared it with an established WGS. It was shown that the prototype elicited more positive feelings than the established system, whereas there were no differences in the number of negative markers. Thus, one can assume that the improvement of UX in the redesigned system was due to the positive UX design concepts. However, there were no significant differences in the mood questionnaires. The paper showed that positive experiences at work can be achieved when the design of professional technology is focused on a positive UX. Long-term studies should further investigate whether these experiences lead to a generally elevated mood. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Design for Wellbeing at Scale)
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22 pages, 1101 KiB  
Article
Relation between Experience Categories and Psychological Needs
by Christina Haspel, Magdalena Laib, Leslie-Ann Early and Michael Burmester
Multimodal Technol. Interact. 2022, 6(9), 80; https://doi.org/10.3390/mti6090080 - 14 Sep 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1720
Abstract
Knowledge about human behaviour and motivation is essential for designing a positive user experience (UX). Theories of psychological needs have been profoundly researched and well-established in UX research. Experience categories are a rather new practical human-centred design method; they are not based on [...] Read more.
Knowledge about human behaviour and motivation is essential for designing a positive user experience (UX). Theories of psychological needs have been profoundly researched and well-established in UX research. Experience categories are a rather new practical human-centred design method; they are not based on a psychological model, but instead on an empirical approach. Experience categories describe common positive experiences in a particular context. According to Hassenzahl, positive experiences result from the fulfilment of psychological needs. However, there has been no research on how experience categories and needs are associated. To fill this gap and enrich the knowledge about experience categories, we investigated which needs co-occur with them. In Study 1, we used a more general approach: experience categories of work context were operationalised with scenarios that were rated with a needs questionnaire. In Study 2, we aimed to replicate the findings of Study 1 in a more specific work context by investigating the relationship between experience categories and needs for an existing sample of experiences. Results show a consistent relationship between some experience categories and needs in both studies. Moreover, the need for competence was particularly relevant in the work context. Future studies should expand on this research to further work contexts. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Design for Wellbeing at Scale)
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