Understanding and designing for digital self-care

Overview

The aim of this project is to better understand self-care practices with digital technologies amongst young adults and to explore opportunities for digital technology design.

Self-care is a process of purposeful engagement in practices that promote holistic health and well-being of the self. Holistic health implies overall health and this encompasses more than just physical health but also includes mental, emotional and even spiritual health of a person. For some people, cooking can be a form of self-care to eat healthily and to get a break from work. In this project we are particularly interested in the intersection of digital technologies and self-care, or what we call ‘digital self-care: purposeful engagement with digital technologies that promotes holistic health and well-being of the self. This could take many forms, like listening to music streaming or podcasts to relax or to work out.

This is a QUT Digital Wellbeing Lab project in partnership with QUT students, the QUT Health and Wellbeing Strategy team, and A/Prof Tuck Wah Leong at UTS.

Digital Self-Care Agenda

Together we have developed an agenda for future research on digital self-care. The agenda includes important issues and challenges experienced by students and open questions for further investigation through a PhD/MPhil/Honours project:

1. Understanding and designing for diversity: digital self-care is still a new and emerging phenomenon for students and one open question is, ‘how we can better support students to personalize digital self-care for their needs?’ This requires a better understanding of the diversity of student experiences, such as how a student’s gender, cultural background, and socioeconomic status may intersect with their self-care. Important questions to ask in future work include, ‘how does digital self-care intersect with other self-care practices among students with a chronic illness or a mental health condition?’, ‘what are potential barriers to digital self-care, financially, culturally, and otherwise?’, and ‘how might we create culturally specific designs?’
2. Caring for one’s time: time management is a key priority in student life. Students need to manage deadlines and expectations during the semester, manage procrastination, balance time on technology with sleep and exercise, and develop a long-term perspective that extends beyond university life. Important questions to investigate are, ‘how might we design ways for students to learn, share, and collaborate on time management as demands change?’, ‘how can we balance engagement and disengagement in technologies designed for winding down to sleep?’, and ‘what role does technology play to support career mentoring and mutual care?’
3. Accountability for digital self-care: while the notion of self-care often presumes that individuals bear responsibility for their own actions and wellbeing, a critical examination of self-care should also disclose how organizations, technology companies and governments are to be held accountable for their role in people’s wellbeing. For example, popular social media and podcasts disseminate advice about self-care, but in many cases accountability of those who promote advice is left unexamined. In the future, we need to ask, ‘who do students see as responsible for digital (self-)care?’, ‘how might we engage with students to interrogate the suitability of popular projections of self-care for their own circumstances?’, and ‘how can we entice students to question what is promoted online and debunk myths and misinformation?’

Research activities

This a human-computer interaction research project. It will involve some or all the following research activities to investigate an item from the digital self-care agenda described above:

• qualitative research with university students through interviews, observations, and diaries/cultural probes to understand self-care practices and different types of technologies used (such as mobile and wearable technologies, social media, AI-based tools)
• co-design workshops with student groups and other stakeholders to create ideas and technology prototypes
• prototyping of technology designs, from developing low-fidelity prototypes through to more robust prototypes that can be trialled in everyday life
• field studies where students can trial digital self-care prototypes and reflect on their experiences.

Outcomes

Upon conclusion of this research, we expect to develop:

• novel interactive technology prototypes designed with students and health well-being professionals
• new human-computer interaction theories describing how digital technologies can support self-care in everyday life
• new co-design methods to engage with students to reflect on their self-care practices and to create ideas for new technologies

Skills and experience

This project requires a strong background in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), interaction design, or human-centred design, with skills in user studies and technology prototyping.

Lived experience with health conditions, experience from working or studying health and psychology, or a passion for a particular wellbeing concern are all helpful to give this project a unique angle.

Scholarships

You may be eligible to apply for a research scholarship.

Explore our research scholarships

Keywords

• digital wellbeing
• digital self-care
• human-computer interaction
• HCI
• interaction design
• co-design
• participatory design
• HCI4health
• HCI4wellbeing
• digital wellbeing lab

Contact

Contact the supervisor for more information.