CAREER: Using Positive Emotion Regulation to Design Everyday Technologies that Promote Well-being

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The project advances human-centered design research by integrating positive emotion regulation (PER) theory into the design of future technologies. Our daily use of smartphones, appliances, and social media can engender pleasurable moments, but they do not inherently lead to improved well-being. People adapt to the joys of using technologies, then find them mundane. Some positive emotions can cause deconstructive behaviors, such as over-engagement on social media. The project investigates designing technologies to support positive emotion regulation in young adults, a population whose mental health can be impacted by limited emotion regulation skills and challenges to accessing traditional health interventions. Practical design methods and tools for the development of such technologies are being generated by incorporating perspectives of design professionals through a series of co-creative workshops and seminars. A toolkit and methods reflecting insights into emotion regulation is being developed and disseminated to help designers create innovative and evidence-based emotion-managing technologies. The project promotes STEM education for underserved students through novel community-engagement programs that encourage students to think critically about how everyday technologies shape human emotion and behavior. The project explores how positive emotions can be effectively regulated through technology and how technology-mediated positive emotions can contribute to well-being. While traditional research assumes a direct impact of technology on user emotions (e.g., manipulation of an artifact’s appearance), this project builds on findings that the impact of technology on emotion regulation is indirect, because it is mediated by users’ activities (e.g., visualizing positive things one did/will do with the technology). Through co-creative, research-through-design methods, the project investigates positive emotion regulation by: (1) analyzing the roles of everyday technology in reinforcing and prolonging positive emotional experiences; (2) developing interactive digital and tangible artifact prototypes (e.g., interactive installations, IoT devices, and apps); (3) evaluating prototypes’ effects on well-being; and (4) translating resulting insights into design methods and tools that support the development of PER technologies to promote well-being. The project discovers new understandings of the relationships between technologies, activities, positive emotions, and well-being. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.