Designing Lifestyles with Digital Wellbeing
Skills
UX Design
Interaction Design
Service Design
User research
Interactive Prototyping
My role
UX/UI Design Intern
Timeline
Jul. 2022 - May. 2023
Team
Guan-Xiu, Jin
Summary
How we build a new life style with digital wellbeing
Bring Back The Lights is a service design that addresses digital wellbeing by offering practical, tailored solutions with tangible devices in real-world scenarios. Through hands-on and immersive experiences, we aim to introduce digital well-being in a way that complements people's daily lifestyles.
In this design team of two, I managed the entire project lifecycle from concept to final design. I was specifically in charge of the service mapping, UX design, and interaction design of the tangible devices. I also illustrated the graphic designs used in the final solution.
Core Experiences
Here's a look at how we incorporate our design into three main scenarios to help people practice digital wellbeing in their existing lifestyles. For a more in-depth discussion of my creative process, scroll down to the next section!
Starting point 01
Public Libraries
Light Pocket
Hide up phone, gather attention.
The Light Pocket set available in public libraries provides a conductive work and study environment that improves focus and productivity, resulting in a greater sense of accomplishment.
Target problem
Distracting phone use during study
Distracting messages and notifications that leads to decreased productivity and lower quality outcomes.
Distracting phone use during study
Distracting messages and notifications that leads to decreased productivity and lower quality outcomes.
How it works?
1. Leave your phone in to start the focus session.
2. Lights up according to your time of focus.
3. Collect the lights/focus you gained back during the session!
Starting point 02
Cafes & Co-working spaces
Light Ripple
Block temptations, stay calm.
The Light Ripple found in cafes, offers an intuitive approach to establish healthy phone use boundaries. Promoting feelings of centeredness and focus, while reducing the temptation to turn to the phone as a coping mechanism.
Target problem
Using phone to cope with stress
Constant need for stimulation and distraction prevents one from processing their emotions in a healthy way.
Setting boundaries around phone usage
Setting boundaries of phone usage by covering the physical appearance of screens.
Meditative breathing exercises
Offering users healthy alternatives to relief stress with subtle breathing lights for users to follow along.
How it works?
1. Place the phone inside the Light Ripple.
2. Activates breathing exercise at the motion of reaching for phone.
3. Companies the users throughout their time of focus.
Starting point 03
Restaurants
Light of togetherness
Light up companionship.
The Light of Togetherness invites couples, friends, families...etc. to put down their phones and focus on the present. By lighting up the time together, peoplecan foster better communication and understanding.
Target problem
Interruption during important moments
Excessive use of technology can cause disconnection from surroundings, leading to a sense of isolation and cause harm in relationships.
Bonding exercise for all
Promotes interaction between each other through a wellbeing practice for multiple users.
How it works?
1. Located on the tables of restaurants.
2. Put down both phones on the induction area to lighten up the Light of Togetherness.
3. Bring back the connection with people you love.
Recap Session
Reflect and boost motivation
The recap session appears at the recap spot of collaborated stores to encourage users to reflect on their experience and changes throughout the process. Also, to offer discounts and gifts to contribute on their motivation.
Initial Problem Discovery
What is "Digital Wellbeing"?
Being a part of the generation that is greatly influenced by digital contents and technology, we thought it would be helpful to understand the problem starting from listening to the voices around us.
We conducted 10+ observations and 5+short interviews in public libraries, cafes, and public transportations, snowballing to know more about people's thoughts and personal encounters with problematic digital product use.
10 +
observations
5 +
short interviews
Key Insight
We found that people struggle to find the right balance with digital wellbeing in their distinct lifestyles.
01. Students are aware of negative relationships with digital products, but fails to find effective solutions.
Students aim to overcome problems in their own ways but fail to do so, leaving discouraging impacts mentally and physically.
02. People struggle from balancing benefits and distractions of digital products.
Students need digital products to help them with various tasks in work, study,...etc. But at the same time, experience distractions throughout the process.
Design Callenge
How can we help people avoid unsupportive use of digital products and foster a better relationship with technology?
Research Planning
Adaptive approach to the challenge
We organized our research plan based on the Intervention Design Process, originated from behavioral science, which focuses on combining psychology, design, technology, and creative methods to find out people’s intentions behind their use and relationship with technology, and how to initiate impactful changes in behaviors to help them achieve digital wellbeing.
User Interview
Diving deeper into the imbalance
“Understand when and why digital products cause disruptions, and the original intentions behind it."
We started off by conducting 7 interviews and 14 rounds of observations to dig into people’s diverse life styles and backgrounds to understand their relationships with technology. When analyzing the findings, the most difficult part was finding common ground in the distinct interactions of users and their use of digital products. To solve this, we focused on understanding the underlying causes that trigger the unsupportive use of digital products, rather than viewing each independent case as separate events.
Interviewing with a doctor who has many experiences towards trying to achieve digital wellbeing.
Affinity Diagram of interview data (using Figma)
3 main scenarios where people experience unsupportive use of digital products:
Scenario 01.
Diverted in attention during tasks that require focus
Students aim to overcome problems in their own ways but fail to do so, leaving discouraging impacts mentally and physically.
Scenario 02.
Using digital product as a way to cope with stress
Students aim to overcome problems in their own ways but fail to do so, leaving discouraging impacts mentally and physically.
Scenario 03.
Interrupted by messages and notifications while socializing with others
Students aim to overcome problems in their own ways but fail to do so, leaving discouraging impacts mentally and physically.
Insights and Analysis
They tried…but failed. Why?
Furthermore, we discovered that people tried taking different levels of actions to resolve the problem. Many of them even came up with series of methods to comprehend with different scenarios. However, despite their efforts to tackle the problems, the result often doesn't go as they wish.
We cross-analyzed participant's behaviors and insights from interview affinity maps to identify the promoting and inhibiting pressures of taking action against problematic digital product use. Through which we found 3 main problems that discourage or prevent them from achieving digital wellbeing.
Pressure mapping the promoting and inhibiting factors that influence user's behaviors.
Major Issues
⌛
Intention - Action Gap
The timing of one’s intention to make change is often different than when problematic phone use is encountered.
💭
Unmotivated to seek help
People often think digital wellness depends merely on one’s willpower, preventing them from asking for help.
❌
Hard to keep up with good habits
Expectation of quick results lead to inconsistency in maintaining healthy digital habits, which can be demotivating.
Synthesis
Design direction: Building behavior changes on existing lifestyles
In what ways can we provide guidance, motivation, and the right method for our users? We decided to focus on building behavior change upon existing lifestyles by accenting the promoting pressures and decreasing inhibiting pressure of of supportive behaviors of digital wellbeing. This will allow us to lessen the transition threshold of our users to adapt to a digital wellbeing lifestyle.
Target audience
Based on the subjects participated in our research, we categorized our interviewees on spectrum of problem awareness and interference in life with the unsupportive usage of digital products. We decided to focus on the more aware and interfered group because they would be in a more urgent stage of behavioral change where we are able to evaluate the effectiveness of our design.
Persona
Within this quadrant of our polarity map, we extracted key characteristics of our users under the 3 main problematic scenarios.
User journey mapping
With all three personas in mind, we were able to draft a detailed journey map, showing specific moments of opportunity for intervention. User's behavioral habits correspond to their mental states, and our goal was to solve the low points of mental states that triggers unsupportive digital product use.
We decided to focus on breaking unintentional actions as they are the common cues under all three scenarios, and guide users to a better way to improve their mental state. With the use of CREATE analysis, we broke down the unsupportive behaviors into micro-actions to help us identify any possible intervention opportunities.
Example of user journey mapping and CREATE analysis on one of our persona (Sabrina).
Ideation
Crafting a recipe for sucess
We brainstormed possible interventions according to the touch points and key moments identified in the user journey maps and CREATE analysis, looking for any opportunities to initiate a change of behavior. Then, we sorted out the ideas using 2x2 matrix. Ultimately, came up with 4 main intervention ideas:
Hide physical appearance
Blocking direct contact with digital products can reduce the temptation to reach for it by 50%.
Detect exhaustion state
Detecting stress and exhaustion on the right timing can prevent excessive stress to cumulate.
Interrupt cues
Create frictions between cues that lead to subconscious use of digital products.
Subtle notifications
Convey notifications in a subtle way that reduces distraction of their goals and intentions.
Design iteration
We came down to 3 different directions to implement our intervention design solutions, and spent 3 weeks experimenting for each direction. Using lo-fi and mid-fi prototypes to test out our design ideas, we evaluated the pros and cons of each solution to find out the best way to incorporate digital wellbeing into user's lives.
Direction 01 : App solution
Direction 02 : Method book + App
During the first two directions of our initial ideas, and reviewing research pain points, we asked ourselves,
"Do these ideas solve the user's pain points?"
Research insight: "People struggle to find the right way to engage digital wellbeing into their lifestyles due to lack of motivation and sense of accomplishment."
After reviewing our research, we recognized that the large effort to learn and adapt a new habit often act as the main threshold of achieving digital wellbeing. We decided to focus on our third design direction tangible devices and website, as it expands the possibility of interaction between our solutions and user's lifestyles.
Final Design
A new life movement to start digital wellbeing
at the right time and place.
After numerous versions of iterations, we went from a simple wellbeing app, to guide books with digital wellbeing methods, and finally to our ultimate design concept, which is a service design combined with tangible devices that triggers intuitive interactions for users to try out digital wellbeing methods under various scenarios that best suites their lifestyle.
Tangible device form ideation
To initiate effective behavioral change under each scenario, we begin brainstorming on the forms of our interaction devices. I sketched out multiple forms and structures, taking the surroundings’ atmosphere and the user's emotional feelings into consideration.
Sketches during ideation phase of our interactive devices illustrated by me
Hand crafting the interactive devices through 3D printing
Service mapping
To ensure our design solution can be implemented into real-world scenarios, we mapped out the service experience map of each tangible device scenarios to evaluate the details in each interaction between users, devices, and cooperating locations. This is to ensure our service design can help our target users incorporate digital wellbeing into their everyday lives seamlessly.
Service map of our design solution implemented in cafes
Navigation website
To tie the service together, me and my teammate designed a navigation website that allows users to establish collaborated stores and locations to find out different digital wellbeing methods that suits their needs. Moreover, keep track of their light collecting journey.
Information architecture of navigation website
Testing and feedback
Bringing the designs to life!
At the end of the project, we were able to exhibit our design concept at an exhibition of 8000+ viewers, where users can actually interact freely with each tangible device under different scenario settings.
What did people say?
💫
"It unleashed my imagination with digital wellbeing!"
People are surprised about how digital wellbeing can be implemented besides the form of an app or screen time restrictions, which complemented with one of our initial goal to expand the imaginations of how people can practice digital wellbeing in a way that fits into their lifestyles in the best way.
🌎
"Making the service accessible for all is a challenge."
People's relationship with technology is very personal and complicated. If we were to continue developing more possibilities of interactions, we would definitely need to research on wider range in age, intentions, habits...etc. to make digital wellbeing accessible for all possible users.
💬
"Social aspect of digital wellbeing was the most touching."
Reflection
Go beyond the "normal approaches"!
Strategic approach
Having 10 months to work on project was a privilege for dense research. However, it also challenged us to strike a balance between research and design iterations. The result of involving behavioral science into this project was a critical move, which provided precise insights on understanding user’s behaviors and generating actual changes according to their various lifestyles.
Connecting the dots into a service
Instead of making separate products to solve the problem, we took on the challenge to connect the dots with a complete service design and bringing it further with a business model. This pushed me to really think about how to bridge the design with user’s experiences from real life scenarios, and every detail that comes across.
Making the experience fun and meaningful!
At the end of the project, we successfully developed actual working tangible devices for users to try out. It gave us the opportunity to obtain realistic feedbacks and visions for future iterations of the design. We hope to collaborate with actual shops and make impact on the new lifestyles that modern people can experience with digital wellbeing.
