You Are Okay

Towards User Interfaces for Improving Well-being

Pedro F. Campos

Madeira-ITI, University of Madeira, Campus da Penteada, Funchal, Portugal

Keywords: Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Well-being, User Interfaces, Positive Behavior Change.

Abstract: Well-being is a relatively broad concept which can be succinctly described as the state of being happy, healthy

or successful. Interesting things happen when bridging user interface design with the psychology of human

well-being. This position paper aims at providing a short on reflection the challenges and opportunities in this

context and presents concrete examples on how to tackle these challenges and exploit the existing design

opportunities.

1 INTRODUCTION

Well-being is a relatively broad concept which can be

succinctly described as the state of being happy,

healthy or successful. Being happy (or feeling suc-

cessful) is mostly related to mental well-being, while

being healthy is typically associated to the physical or

physiological well-being. However, this correspond-

ence is not fully straightforward. It is the complete in-

terplay between these three qualities that effectively

brings us to a state of full well-being. Interaction de-

sign, on the other hand, is the practice of designing

interactive digital products, systems, and services fo-

cuses on creating engaging experiences for a wide va-

riety of audiences, contexts and domains. The design

of any sort of interactive experience is an exercise that

does not lend itself to any dogmas or prescriptive so-

lutions.

Skeptics are correct when they claim that the his-

tory of mankind is a story of missed opportunities.

The same could be said about the act of designing user

interfaces. Any user interface is something that is

constantly under construction, but also, in parallel, in

a state of constant destruction. It is often said that the

best designers are those who force themselves into in-

venting, evaluating and evolving the largest possible

number of design ideas. In this context, interesting

things happen when bridging user interface design

and the psychology of human well-being. This posi-

tion paper aims at providing a short on reflection the

challenges and opportunities in this context and pre-

sents concrete examples on how to tackle these chal-

lenges and exploit the opportunities.

A serious amount of research has been dedicated

to improving mental well-being through mobile tech-

nology and interactive experiences. Augmented real-

ity, for instance, has become quite popular in contexts

such as the classroom (Campos and Pessanha, 2011).

Lathia et al. (2013) defend that it is possible to make

inferences about use contexts, physical activities, and

mental states (including emotions and stress) using

data from smartphone sensors (Lathia et al., 2013).

These are also privileged devices to provide tailored

advice, support goal setting, help users plan and chart

their progress, and send personalized emails or SMS

reminders. Their system (called EmotionSense) auto-

matically recognizes who is speaking and what the

speaker is feeling, using classifiers that run locally on

phones. They had good results in predicting emotions

from speech and believe this solution obviates the

need for self-input. It still needs work and a perfection

of technology, however, to be fully reliable. They also

test another application called SocioSense, that ap-

plies a gamification method to the social communica-

tions of the user (Lathia et al., 2013).

Social networks, essentially Facebook, have also

been studied from the perspective of emotion-sharing.

Buechel and Berger (2012) set out to accomplish two

goals: to understand if “emotionally unstable” people

post personal stories on Facebook more than others,

and to know what types of sharing possibilities have

a bigger positive impact on the user’s well-being. Es-

sential findings showed that users were classified as

Emotionally Stable and Unstable based on a well-

documented survey/scale called Big Five Personality

Inventory (John and Srivastava, 1999).

Campos, P.

You Are Okay.

DOI: 10.5220/0006787205470550

In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2018), pages 547-550

ISBN: 978-989-758-298-1

547

Journaling is a means of emotion expression. It

prevents the inhibition of emotion which is harmful

as a chronic stressor (Ullrich and Lutgendorf, 2002).

Expressing Trauma-Related emotions in a safe

environment enhances feelings of control and mas-

tery over traumatic events (Ullrich and Lutgendorf,

2002).

Journaling also allows for cognitive processing of

critical life situations where subjective meanings of

the world have been questioned. An experiment com-

pared the effects of writing about emotions, facts or

both and realized that the combination of both pre-

sents the best result. Researchers tried to compare

emotional disclosure (journaling) versus cognitive

disclosure and both. They also compared differences

in the content of the writing and their outcomes. The

group that wrote about both emotions and facts in-

creasingly wrote about cognitive processing topics

(understanding the problems, rather than stressing on

the emotions) (Ullrich and Lutgendorf, 2002).

Ma and colleagues (2012) propose a novel frame-

work called MoodMiner for assessing and analyzing

mood in daily life. MoodMiner uses mobile phone

data – mobile phone sensor data and communication

data (including acceleration, light, ambient sound, lo-

cation, call log, etc.) - to extract human behavior pat-

tern and assess daily mood. Experimental results on

15 users for a month showed an effective assessment

of the system to decipher daily moods objectively

with minimal user intervention. The sensor types used

to model the system application include: accelerome-

ter - used to detect the user’s physical environment;

sound sensor - used to sense background sound and

the user’s voice that can both discern the mood state

of the user; location - used to provide context infor-

mation for user behavior. The application was de-

signed to have a set of daily behavior features ex-

tracted from mobile sensor data and communication

data.

Because of the subjective nature of mood, sensor

data, communication data and the failure to reflect

mood swings through historical mood data - the ana-

lyzed mood may be incorrect. Further, users show a

significant difference in daily behavior style and

phone usage pattern. The model discussed by Ma et

al. has the potential to be successful, however it

would involve the dedicate use of mobile phones to

keep it from failing (Ma et al., 2012).

To achieve better levels of human well-being,

both physical and mental well-being, one can use a

design approach targeted at positive behavior change.

Behavior change is a central objective in public health

interventions, with an increased focus on prevention

prior to onset of disease. Due to many factors, such as

the increasing popularity of activity trackers, interest

has been rising on approaches where change happens

through reflection. However, this approach has one

major drawback: there is an excessive reliance on us-

er's motivation to explore the data. Faced with this

problem, interaction designers have been investigat-

ing strategies for behavior change that do not require

thoughtful effort to adopt more positive behaviors.

Nudges have been revealing as the most promis-

ing approach; they endeavor to make judgments and

choices easier through incentives, reinforcement and

unforced suggestion right when decisions take place

behavior change. A more radical approach to nudges

has been the so-called “pleasurable troublemakers”

(Laschke et al., 2014). Keymoment illustrates this ap-

proach. It is a gadget that holds one’s car and bicycle

keys. Upon departure, the user makes a choice about

his mode of transportation. If he chooses the car,

Keymoment drops his bicycle keys on the floor,

nudging him to reconsider his choice.

2 OUR APPROACH

Our approach to creating novel interactive experi-

ences for improving well-being is based on the con-

cept of intervention. In psychology, interventions are

actions performed to bring about change to people,

and modern applied psychology is very rich in inter-

vention strategies and techniques. A positive psycho-

logical intervention is an exercise, or set of exercises,

which have been shown in lab experiments to in-

crease positive emotions, or other desirable states.

Therefore, we typically begin the process by iden-

tifying the type of problem we are dealing with, and

then we conceptualize a series of possible interven-

tions in a technology-independent way. This requires,

naturally, the deep involvement of psychologists in

the team, who play an active role in the design of the

interactive experiences, from day one until the suc-

cessive roll-outs and in loco evaluations of such ex-

periences.

Through our own experience during the last four

to five years, we have tailored the typical HCI design

process to include a few steps that seem to help de-

signers to open way for improved human well-being.

There are three “tasks” that are always conducted:

1. Watch a Movie. This implies getting popcorns and

drinks, forcing the entire team to spend time together

in front of a distinct “reality”, with the specific goal –

pre-established! – of using the movie’s characters as

actors in the product brainstorming.

ICEIS 2018 - 20th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

548

2. Make a Field Trip. When designing user inter-

faces for all things related to well-being, nothing re-

places the value of a real, focused, honest field trip. It

is especially important to carefully document all as-

pects of the field trip, as it is equally critical to main-

tain that documentation in well-printed large posters

scattered throughout the work space of the team.

3. Design a Cartoon. This technique is similar to sce-

narios or storyboards, but requires an explicit creation

of a cartoon. Some of our team members have re-

cently started to use tools such as ComicLife and "In-

stagram-like" apps like Prisma to streamline this pro-

cess and make the results more appealing and inspir-

ing. Some work analysis methods also employ similar

techniques to this one (Campos et al., 2013).

Providing examples of the type of interventions

and interactive experiences we have developed is

probably the best way to illustrate this approach.

3 EXAMPLES

3.1 Promoting Well-being by Social

Media-triggered Routine Breaks

With the rise of social networks, connectivity and me-

dia consumption have seen dramatic changes. In this

work, we focus on understanding how mental well-

being relates to people’s routines, what dangers and

recommendations we should be aware of, and what

opportunities exist to leverage current technologies in

order to improve people’s lives.

As a contribution to HCI based on our research

insights, we designed a solution that promotes daily

mental well-being. Spark is a mobile application

where everyone in the world participates in a single

challenge every 25 hours. Each challenge asks the

user to perform an activity, capturing that moment

with a photo, and then sharing it.

As the user participates in different challenges

over time, a record of his activities is always accessi-

ble. This encourages the user to relive positive past

experiences, and take note of his accomplishments.

This is an example of how mobile technology can be

deployed with the specific goal of improving people’s

mental well-being. The results seem promising as this

research project progresses.

3.2 Mitigating Excessive Consumerism

Excessively consuming essentially futile or unneces-

sary assets has turned into a true epidemic, at least in

the richest and more developed countries in the world.

These consuming habits, when excessive, can really

lead to serious problems, of psychological nature,

therefore converting excessive consumption into an

effective public (mental) health problem. We studied

the factors that drive people to consume more or less,

and the psychologists in our team conducted an em-

pirical study in order to inform the design of novel

interactive technologies for mitigating this problem.

In this context, we proposed #LookWhatIDidNotBuy

as a new psychological counseling app that promotes

the social media sharing of the photos of goods that

the user managed not to buy, thus resisting the temp-

tation. The app also provides advice using positive re-

inforcement, daily challenges, and tips.

The relevant aspect of this approach stems from

the fact that our design goes against the dominant nar-

rative of goal-setting apps and goal-setting theory, ad-

vocating that sharing the media of goods not bought

can induce positive behavior change.

3.3 Exploiting Hypnagogic States using

VR to Improve Creativity

Creativity is actually a very easy way to achieve well-

being. Visual art represents a powerful resource for

mental and physical well-being. Studies have con-

vincingly demonstrated that the production of visual

art improves effective interaction between parts of the

brain. Karen Robinson, for instance, is a very inter-

esting artist who conducts post-traumatic growth. She

uses art, creative writing and photography as the main

tools for therapy. Well-being is not just about positive

affective states. It often involves cognitive evalua-

tions of the conditions of one’s life (e.g., overall life

satisfaction). One of the problems faced by today's

generation of knowledge workers is the lack of crea-

tivity, experienced by writers in the form of writer's

block. The perception of becoming unsuccessful in

the professional sides of our lives can lead to a de-

crease in our well-being - this reflects both mentally

and physically. In this project, we explore Virtual Re-

ality as a tool to kickstart hypnagogic states. In the

borderlands between wakefulness and rest there is a

strange and fascinating state of consciousness charac-

terized by dream-like visions and strange sensory oc-

currences. Psychologists call this stage “hypna-

gogia,” but centuries before they created a term for it,

artists were already using the hypnagogic state to tap

into some of their best ideas.

3.4 Supporting Vulnerable Populations

Interaction design for well-being can also shape itself

as a social movement with impact over more vulner-

able segments of the population. In a 2015 project,

You Are Okay

549

our team embarked on a quest to improve the mental

well-being of underserved youths in a local school.

Minority groups are the fastest growing demographic

in the U.S. In addition, the poverty level in the U.S. is

the highest it has been in the last 50 years. The com-

munity, therefore, needs more research addressing

this user segment. We studied how underserved

youths react when presented with different UI designs

aimed at promoting creative writing (Gonçalves et al.,

2015). The act of creative writing per se can become

the driver of change among underserved teenagers,

and researchers should strive to discover novel UI de-

signs that can effectively increase this target group's

productivity, creativity and mental well-being. Using

MS Word as baseline, we analyzed the influence of a

Zen-like tool (a tool designed at our lab, and called

PlaceToWrite), a nostalgic but realistic typewriting

tool (Hanx Writer), and a stress-based tool that elim-

inates writer's block by providing consequences for

procrastination (Write or Die).

Our results suggest that the Zen characteristics of

our tool PlaceToWrite were capable of conveying a

sense of calm and concentration to the users, making

them feel better and also write more. The nostalgic

Hanx typewriter also fared very well with regard to

mental well-being and productivity.

There have been other interventions designed, de-

veloped and evaluated by our team, including: Im-

proving family life; improving the life and health of

the aging population; dealing with work, multitasking

and distractions; and primary prevention of violence

in teenage dating.

4 CONCLUSIONS AND OPEN

QUESTIONS

As with all scientific problems, many questions re-

main permanently open to improvements. How to im-

prove the levels of collaboration between teams of

psychologists, interaction designers, marketing ex-

perts and engineers? How can we better evaluate the

quality of the interactive experience, the same way

psychologists assess the quality of their interven-

tions? Also, how can interaction designers target ex-

periences that are specifically tailored to each user's

problems and needs?

As interaction designers, we have the power to use

technology as a vehicle for transformative experi-

ences. Information technologies have deeply trans-

formed our world, and are now weaved into many as-

pects of our daily life. Simply recognizing the poten-

tial of interaction design for improving human well-

being is not enough. Designers need principles,

guidelines, successful case studies from which they

can obtain inspiration leading to an ever-increasing

number of interactive experiences that can be effec-

tive in attaining the eternal goal of an improved well-

being.

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