When the Good Turns Ugly: Speculating Next Steps for Digital Wellbeing Tools

Abstract

Concerns surrounding technology use in society has led to the HCI community creating tools for 'digital wellbeing'. These aim to improve users' relationships with technology, but these positively motivated tools may initiate further negative impacts for users e.g. on their privacy or autonomy. Using Pierce's speculative design concepts of 'foot-in-the-door' technologies and focusing on three common digital wellbeing features (time limits and prompts, social 'do not disturb' modes, app and service blocking), I highlight how these tools are a small step away from being used to manipulate users which could enact slow shifts in users accepting such manipulation. Through this and the discussion, I accentuate that positively motivated designs may not explicitly lead to positive interactions by default. I hope this paper will facilitate speculative design and discussion in the digital wellbeing community, to ensure that our designs continue to mitigate negative impacts from technology now and in the future.

Analysis of IoT-Related Ergonomics-Based Healthcare Issues Using Analytic Hierarchy Process Methodology

“…For the betterment of users’ relationships with technological advancements, the Human-Computer Interface community has been creating tools for “healthcare” [ 11 ]. The authors had done a review of the characteristics of more than forty healthcare applications analyzing more than one thousand user reviews of applications.…”

Decoding the sustainable consumer: what yoga psychology tells us about self-control and impulsive buying?

“…For example, the Huffington Post encourages employees to use its app “ Thrive ” which incentivizes them to they stay away from their phone to focus on work. In fact, Google's Android operating system now comes with a dedicated “ Digital Well Being ” mode that provides users granular metrics on the time they spend on their smartphone use and media consumption (Widdicks, 2020). The intent here is to provide encouragement to users to restrain their consumption by turning their need for contentment and into gamified rewards.…”

The Good, the Bad, and the Missing: Topic Modeling Analysis of User Feedback on Digital Wellbeing Features

“…However, researchers and practitioners must consider the ethical implications of such design patterns. In this context, features that block access to the device or certain applications have been raising concerns, as they could desensitize users to manipulative prompts or be potentially used to increase control over workers [9]. Moreover, restrictive features that decrease the level of control over one's device can be harmful to one's autonomy, self-determination and wellbeing [23].…”

“…Digital wellbeing apps contain features such as self-monitoring, blocks, and gamification, which interact with users toward decreased smartphone usage in distinct ways. While previous research sought to uncover the features and their effectiveness [7], little is known about the features' effects on users [8], especially the adverse effects associated with their use [9,10]. Thus, we propose the research questions: What are users' opinions about digital wellbeing apps?…”