Wellbeing supportive design -- Research-based guidelines for supporting psychological wellbeing in user experience
This provides technology designers with practical, theory-grounded guidelines to enhance user wellbeing, though it is incremental as it applies existing psychological theories to design.
The paper addresses the lack of research-based practices for designing digital experiences that support psychological wellbeing by translating over 30 years of psychology research into 15 heuristics and 30 actionable design strategies.
While human beings have a right to digital experiences that support, rather than diminish, their psychological wellbeing, technology designers lack research-based practices for ensuring psychological needs are met. To help address this gap, we draw on findings from over 30 years of research in psychology (specifically, self-determination theory) that has identified contextual factors shown to support psychological wellbeing. We translate these findings into a list of 15 heuristics and 30 design strategies to provide technology makers with theoretically grounded, research-based, and actionable ways to support wellbeing in user experience.