Design for Wellbeing at Scale

Dear Colleagues,

Technology has the power to influence psychological wellbeing for better or for worse and to do so at scale. The pervasive changes to work, school and daily life brought about by a global pandemic have further clarified the critical importance of technologies to our wellbeing, including the role they play in how we find connection, meaning and balance in our lives.  It also brought to light issues related to digital divide, and to access to, and sustainability of, technologies. As such, owing to the ubiquity of technologies across demographic lines, design has the potential to deploy benefits at unprecedented scale. However, doing so requires research into ways this can be done effectively.

For this article collection we will bring together research exploring how interactive design can contribute to sustained wellbeing in meaningful ways.  As such, we invite papers from all facets of design for wellbeing, including design for resilience, transformation, positive experiences, psychological needs, life satisfaction, quality of life, positive emotions and harmony.

We especially encourage research studies (e.g. experimental studies, case studies, qualitative studies, etc.) that can contribute to evidence of the impact on wellbeing of proposed methods, frameworks, and design interventions.

We welcome applications to a wide range of domains, including workplace wellbeing, resilience in isolated or extreme environments, wellbeing in daily life and support for psychological health within physical health contexts, among others.

Emphasis is on a holistic notion of user experience (UX) which goes well beyond usability of technologies or designed systems, to consider design for emotional experience as well as balanced and sustained wellbeing. 

By specifying wellbeing at scale, we refer to the capacity for digital technologies to have particularly broad or specialised reach. This might refer to design for the population at large, for a specific community, for a school or workplace, or into daily life.

This is a rolling article collection and as such submissions will be welcomed up until March 2022.

Topics

• Design for Psychological Wellbeing, digital wellbeing, and quality of life
• Design for Resilience, transformation, and harmony
• Workplace wellbeing
• Design for positive emotions and meaning
• Positive design/technology/computing
• (Smart) material design for wellbeing
• Wellbeing in stressful and extreme environments (eg. frontline workers, isolated workplaces, carers, etc.)
• Design to address loneliness and isolation, in lockdown and beyond
• Design for connection/relatedness/relationships
• Design for equity of access and accessibility in relation to psychological wellbeing
• Wellbeing supportive design as responsible design

Dr. Naseem Ahmadpour
Prof. Dr. Michael Burmester
Dr. Anja Thieme
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.