Changing Designers First: a Nudge-based Design Framework for Inclusiveness and Wellbeing

As technology permeates every aspect of our daily lives, having technology that is useful, inclusive, and safe is essential. Technology products and services are considered not to be neutral, rather, play active mediating roles between humans and the real world, and leading to consequences on their lives and future (Verbeek, 2005). For this reason, ark>designersark> of digital platforms, services and devices need to anticipate and minimise possible mental and cognitive costs caused by Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) frictions (Mazza, 2017). Inclusive design (which is also called universal design and design for all) ensures creating solutions that are accessible to and usable by as many persons and in many contexts as reasonably possible (Keates, 2005). It is one of the areas that has been attracting numerous attention for the last few decades, especially after the amendment of the rehabilitation acts in 1998. This amendment was made to ensure digital accessibility and design inclusivity to safeguard equal opportunities for people with disabilities. Nowadays, ensuring inclusivity in digital platforms for all users (not limited to people with commonly recognised disabilities) can save individuals from inadvertent harm caused by lack of connection and hurtful isolation (Sheldon et al, 2011). Social media, for instance, have shown to facilitate jealousy, stress and lower wellbeing when used by certain user groups due to some design features such as likes, and authentic self-representation (Grieve and Watkinson, 2016; Hudson et al., 2015). These features represent relatedness, which scholars defined as the sense of belonging and connectedness to others, and described as the core to most, if not all, theories of wellbeing (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). However, when used by those with low self-esteem and high social influence susceptibility, negative emotions and psychological states can also be activated (Altuwairiqi et al, 2019). While most of the existing approaches in the literature and practices focus on the product and users, this project targets ark>designersark>. In the past four decades, a variety of approaches have been developed and used including: observing the user experience, asking for expert opinion, and simulating the interaction. These approaches have focused on either the product or the end-users. Studies that are more recent have discussed the role of ark>designersark> as a resource in the design process when designing wearable technologies (Svaneas and Barkhuus, 2020; Kristina et al., 2016; Alaoui et al., 2015). A common observation in these studies states that the skills, the sensitivities, and empathy of the designer directly contribute to the successful application of the product. We hypothesise that ark>designersark>’ attitude towards designing for inclusivity and wellbeing is beneficial, possibly critical, to meet those human-centred requirements. We aim at nudging the ark>designersark> and broadening their spectrum of attention and interest from the immediate benefit of efficiency and usability, to designing for inclusiveness and maintaining users’ digital wellbeing. We aim to benefit from the vast research of Nudge and HCI, to develop our Nudge-based approach. The approach we plan to develop is meant to empower existing tools that are based on inspection-based methods of technology solutions. This work is aligned with the continuous efforts Qatar is putting together to ensure inclusivity and leaving no one behind, whether in physical or digital worlds. Initiatives such as Doha Declaration which supported Qatar’s commitments towards CRPD signed in 2008, H.H Sheikha Moza’s suggestion for proclaiming 9th of September as the international day for protecting education from attacks which can lead to limited inclusion in access and use of e-learning, Digital inclusion strategy, Mada’s Assistive technology centre, and others, all show Qatar’s commitment for inclusion in all fields and at all levels. In this research, we aim to address the question of "how can we provide a well-structured framework with the best instrumentations that target altering ark>designersark>’ attitude, thinking and behaviour towards considering the inclusiveness and wellbeing of the users as a first-class requirement?”. The Nudge technique, introduced nearly a decade ago by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), is a premier method for behaviour change and it has seen successful in different domains, especially those requiring mild behaviour modification. Within a controlled and software-assisted environment, such as the design frameworks and tools, a range of nudge-based mechanics can be utilised. Nudge represents “any aspect of the choice architecture that alters people’s behaviour in a predictable way without forbidding any options or significantly ark>changingark> their economic incentives” (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008). This concept has been used by several governmental entities, such as Behavioral Insight Team (BIT) in the UK, and ‘Nudge Squad’ in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) in the US. In academia, the idea was eagerly adopted in several contexts, including health, sustainability, and privacy. Domains such as HCI (Caraban et al., 2019), health informatics (Vlaev et al., 2016), behaviour sciences (Hallsworth et al., 2016), and others have adopted and applied this idea. To the best of our knowledge, this research is novel as existing research focused on the process and metrics to use when building and testing inclusive and healthy designs. The notion of wellbeing and its relationship to technology design is also new. Google launched its program on Digital Wellbeing only recently with a basic overage of wellbeing properties, e.g. minimising distraction, pausing and quality sleep. We hypothesise that digital media design shall be inclusive not only in terms of being usable to all and in a wide variety of contexts, but also in accommodating diversity in wellbeing requirements of the different user's groups.

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)