Sep 17, 2020

People-First Principles for Digital Wellbeing

A sneak peek at the UX foundations grounding Google's Digital Wellbeing Toolkit

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In thinking about digital wellbeing, Material strives to cultivate people's fundamental needs. But how, on a practical level, is the need for overall wellbeing and healthy relationships to digital products embedded in the Material Design system?

To address this question, Material collaborated with the cross-Google Digital Wellbeing team to create UX principles that inform system implementations and new designs.

The Digital Wellbeing Toolkit features four UX principles for wellbeing, along with guidelines, use cases, provocative thought starters, and a workshop kit to put the concepts into practice. The toolkit will be previewed at the International Design Conference today and will soon be publicly available. Here’s a sneak peek of the new principles and guidelines, as well as the research behind the project.

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Empower through defaults

Making choices that benefit long-term wellbeing over immediate gratification is difficult. The principle of “empowerment” recognizes the fundamental role that default settings can play in tipping the scales in favor of decision-making that enhances wellbeing. Defaults have been shown to effectively (and often effortlessly) move people to make positive choices about their finances (default type: opt-out 401k saving plans) and public health (default type: opt-out organ donation registry). Designing healthy defaults offers an opportunity to positively impact user wellbeing.

Illustration by Jack Cunningham

One example of a supportive product default can be seen in YouTube’s option to disable sounds and notifications: a setting that promotes rest from 10 PM–8 AM by default. While users may always turn the setting off or adjust the timing to fit their own needs, defaults take user wellbeing as a starting point, rather than an extra step that users must set up for themselves.

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Bring awareness to behaviors and goals

Information and opportunities that lead to self-reflection help people become more aware of how they’re spending their time. Researchers have shown that bringing self-awareness to activities like device use effectively brings awareness to one’s goals, particularly sleep, exercise, and nutrition. When users receive regular feedback on their activity, they’re empowered to more easily course-correct behaviors toward goals that may be off track.

To encourage intentional phone use, Android’s Digital Wellbeing dashboard provides usage data with a visualization.

To design for wellbeing, incorporating usage data can encourage people to reflect on their activities and goals. Common approaches include dashboards, data visualization, and behavior-specific insights in the UI.

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Provide transparent settings

According to a 2019 study commissioned by Google, 1 in 3 people made or attempted to make changes to their tech use in order to address undesired effects they experienced. More than 80% of those who took action on that experience found it to be helpful. This insight gives us another reason to make controls available and easily discoverable so that when people want to make a change in their habits or experience, it’s as easy as possible.

To provide transparency and control, Family Link gives parents access to their kids’ activity and schedules.

On/off switches are an easy place to begin providing people with more granular controls. If products take the time to anticipate people's diverse needs, abilities, and backgrounds, we can better identify ways to adjust for these needs. Transparent controls are achieved by thoroughly explaining how a feature functions, including how data is collected and used.

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Build context-aware experiences

In another 2019 study commissioned by Google, the Digital Wellbeing team learned that tech affects people most when it hinders or supports their goals. Not surprisingly, people didn’t report feeling good when their goals were hindered by tech. In fact, they felt annoyed, tired, and even ashamed. On the other hand, when people felt their goals were supported by tech, they felt happy, proud, calm, and excited. Understanding and supporting an individual’s goals is fundamental and can be achieved by thinking about adaptability.

To adapt for the need for sleep, Bedtime mode uses the clock to set a preferred schedule, which also enables features like Grayscale and Do Not Disturb.

Individual contexts are as diverse as the goals, abilities, and backgrounds of each person. Factor in the time of day, devices being used, and location, and you can see how important adaptability is to wellbeing. The product experience that’s effective in the morning won’t always serve people’s needs in the evening. Consider all of these variables, and how they might pile up and frustrate people. Then build the most adaptive experiences possible to manage these cumulative effects.

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Beyond the principles

Building for digital wellbeing is about more than checking off a list of principles – it requires empathy and creativity. When you combine these UX attributes with principles for digital wellbeing, design can serve to support people’s goals and ultimately, enhance the positive outcomes.