Emotions and Digital Well-Being: on Social Media’s Emotional Affordances

Social media technologies (SMTs) are routinely identified as a strong and pervasive threat to digital well-being (DWB). Extended screen time sessions, chronic distractions via notifications, and fragmented workflows have all been blamed on how these technologies ruthlessly undermine our ability to exercise quintessential human faculties. One...

Families versus Machines: On how a startup can improve digital well-being in the family life

The goal of this project was to find a way to improve digital well-being in family life through design for the startup Unpluq. In this thesis, the designer combined a design approach called Value Sensitive Design with the list of requirements methodology taught at Industrial Design Engineering. This resulted in a new methodology that allowed the...

Digital well-being under pandemic conditions: catalysing a theory of online flourishing

The COVID-19 pandemic has catalysed what may soon become a permanent digital transition in the domains of work, education, medicine, and leisure. This transition has also precipitated a spike in concern regarding our digital well-being. Prominent lobbying groups, such as the Center for Humane Technology (CHT), have responded to this concern....