Author: jy846

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Positive emodiversity in everyday human-technology interactions and users’ subjective well-being

Publication

  • Yoon, J. and Kim, C. (2022) Emodiversity in human-product interactions and users’ subjective well-being, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.Download

This project investigates the effects of experiencing diverse positive emotions in technology use on users’ well-being, referred to as positive emodiversity. We examined technology’s role in facilitating positive emodiversity and well-being through a questionnaire study (N= 116; 580 example cases), in which three sources of emotions were considered: technology as an object, instrument, or enabler. Further, we evaluated how technology-supported hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits are associated with well-being. A regression analysis showed that increased positive emodiversity leads to increased well-being (p<.001). The effect was predicted by the three sources and both hedonic and eudaimonic pursuits. When engaged in positive activities enabled by technology, users experienced more diverse positive emotions, increasing their well-being. The study offers new understandings of the relationships between technologies, emodiversity, and well-being, and provides evidence that designing for a wide diversity of positive emotions, as opposed to generalized pleasure-displeasure distinction, can enrich users’ experiences, enhancing their well-being.

Research scheme: Positive emodiversity facilitated by technology and its influence on well-being.

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Factors of product attachment and their effects on sustainable product usage behaviors

Publication

  • Kowalski, M., & Yoon, J. (2022). I love it, I’ll never use it: Exploring factors of product attachment and their effects on sustainable product usage behaviors, International Journal of Design. 16(3), 37-57. Download
  • Cornell Chronicle (2023). Meaningful but unused products hinder sustainability. Link.

Research on product attachment has shown that users tend to retain emotionally meaningful products longer, and delay their disposal. This has been suggested to be more environmentally sustainable, though little empirical evidence of the actual long-term use of these products is available. Two studies sought to understand the factors of product attachment and their role in sustainable product usage behavior. Study 1 involved qualitative semi-structured interviews to understand users’ relationships with meaningful product possessions and how this connected to their long-term product use. Through an online questionnaire, Study 2 quantitatively investigated the relative roles of factors of product attachment in product usage behaviors. The results from both studies showed differing patterns of product use. While at times products of attachment are used actively for their practical utilitarian purpose, at other times they are set aside for more passive psychological reasons. In this passive use pathway, evidence was found of increased redundant product consumption to satisfy practical needs, contrary to expectations expressed in previous literature. Perceived irreplaceability of a product, while being most influential in stimulating higher levels of attachment, was associated with more passive use and redundant product consumption.

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Does practicing a diversity of savoring techniques help enhance happiness?

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Interaction scenarios for Revealing Moments in which two individuals self-select different positive activities in response to the same ambiguous prompt (i.e., “Bring light”).

Publication

  • Faulk, J., & Yoon, J. (2023). Does practicing a diversity of savoring techniques help enhance happiness? A randomized-controlled trial of design-mediated well-being, Journal of Design Research. (In press – Downloadable upon request)
  • Faulk, J.D., Oluwadairo, O., & Yoon, J. (2022). Secret dance and bring light: Enhancing user autonomy through directional ambiguity in designing positive emotion regulation interventions. Design Research Society (DRS), Bilbao, ES. Download

When we look forward to enjoyable events or share positive experiences with others we can prolong and amplify our positive emotions. These and other savoring techniques can increase our subjective well-being. Yet, it remains unknown whether practicing a variety of savoring techniques adds its own happiness-enhancing effect. In this 1X3 randomized-controlled trial, 71 participants used a novel, interactive poster to facilitate high vs. low savoring diversity over eight days, or they journaled in the control condition. Unlike other positive psychology interventions, the poster was designed to inspire users to self-select their own happiness-enhancing activities. Regression analyses showed that while cognitive well-being increased in the high diversity condition, emotional well-being did not. These results suggested that assigning savoring diversity may have modestly contributed to users’ cognitive well-being. Written responses further pointed to the poster’s potential effectiveness in promoting positive experiences. Implications for design practice and directions for future research are discussed.

A diagram that depicts how practicing diverse savoring techniques may increase participants’ well-being.

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MDTL’s research featured on Cornell Research

MDTL’s research on “Designing Technologies for Wellbeing” was featured on the Cornell Research.

Designing Technologies for Wellbeing

Our daily use of smartphones and social media can engender pleasurable moments, but can these technologies contribute to genuine happiness?

With this CAREER award, Jay Yoon, Human Centered Design, is developing new approaches to technology design to support the creation of smartphone apps, home appliances, and other everyday technologies that improve wellbeing over the long term. This research draws on recent insights from positive psychology, which emphasizes people’s capacity to improve their mental health by enhancing and savoring experiences of joy, contentment, fascination, and other positive emotions. This project will specifically address technology use among adolescents and young adults, who are less likely than older adults to practice behaviors that enhance positive emotions. This population is also more inclined to seek immediate gratification and less likely to take advantage of traditional health interventions such as mental health counseling.

This project pursues a detailed understanding of the relationship between technology design, user-technology interactions, positive emotion, and wellbeing. Researchers will analyze the role of everyday technology in reinforcing and prolonging positive emotions. They will then develop new technology that facilitates increased positive experiences and evaluate their effects on wellbeing. Finally, through a series of co-creative workshops and seminars, researchers will draw on the perspectives of design professionals to translate the resulting insights into practical design tools and methods.

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Decision-making experiences of maximizers and satisficers in human-design interactions

Publication

  • Shin, Y., Ranjan, K., Kowalski, M., and Yoon, J. (2023). Investigating the Decision-making Experiences of Maximizers and Satisficers: The Case of Interactions with Conversational Music Recommender Systems. Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2023). ACM. (Under review)

This project investigates a human-centered perspective for creating a recommender system by focusing on users’ different decision-making styles and information processing modes. According to emerging research in behavioral science, people’s decision-making tendencies can be broadly classified into two styles: (1) maximizers, who strive to maximize the expected utility and, (2) satisficers, who want to reach their own sufficiency. When users exert a high level of cognitive elaboration in decision-making, they engage in analytical processing, while imagery processing takes place when cognitive elaboration is low. Utilizing these theoretical distinctions, we developed Arlo Assistant, a conversational user interface that differentiates ways of recommending music. Through an in-lab experiment, we tested the effects of using Arlo Assistant on both maximizers’ and satisficers’ decision-making experiences. The study provides initial evidence that a personalized recommender system tailored to users’ different decision-making styles can facilitate more positive experiences and discusses implications for developing recommender systems.

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CuriousU—Guest lecture on design for positive experiences


On August 15, 2022, MDTL gave a guest lecture at CuriousU, International Summer School in Europe, organized by Design Lab of University of Twente, the Netherlands.
The lecture was part of “Design the Future” and “Health & Happiness” tracks in which 30 students from design and psychology participated.

Abstract

With the emerging realization of the contribution of design-mediated positive emotions to well-being, evoking positive emotions became explicit design objectives. However, experiencing positive emotions does not necessarily lead to increased well-being effectively. Studies show that a few intense positive emotions can be ineffective in improving well-being. People quickly become accustomed to the pleasure, eventually finding it mundane. At worst, some positive emotions can engender deconstructive behaviors such as over-engagement on social media. Thus, a question emerges: how can products be designed to enhance and extend positivity in a well-being enhancing way? This CuriousU guest lecture addresses the design contribution to positive experiences, especially focusing on design-mediated Positive Emotion Regulation (PER). Students will learn theoretical and empirical aspects of PER and their relevance to design practice. Through a combination of lecture and hands-on exercise, the students will gain an overview of diverse ways of enabling users to up-regulate their positive emotions, and discuss how the overview can be used to identify design opportunities with users’ well-being in mind.

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MDTL wins NSF CAREER award

Jay Yoon, Director of Cornell’s Meta Design & Technology Lab received NSF CAREER award with the research “Using Positive Emotion Regulation to Design Everyday Technologies that Promote Well-being.”
NSF’s CAREER: The Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

The grant will support the research from 2022 to 2027. The project abstract is as follows.

The project advances human-centered design research by integrating positive emotion regulation (PER) theory into the design of future technologies. Our daily use of smartphones, appliances, and social media can engender pleasurable moments, but they do not inherently lead to improved well-being. People adapt to the joys of using technologies, then find them mundane. Some positive emotions can cause deconstructive behaviors, such as over-engagement on social media. The project investigates designing technologies to support positive emotion regulation in young adults, a population whose mental health can be impacted by limited emotion regulation skills and challenges to accessing traditional health interventions. Practical design methods and tools for the development of such technologies are being generated by incorporating perspectives of design professionals through a series of co-creative workshops and seminars. A toolkit and methods reflecting insights into emotion regulation is being developed and disseminated to help designers create innovative and evidence-based emotion-managing technologies. The project promotes STEM education for underserved students through novel community-engagement programs that encourage students to think critically about how everyday technologies shape human emotion and behavior.

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Variapsody: Creating three interactive music listening experiences that use diversified positive emotion regulation strategies to promote subjective well-being

Publication

  • Ghanem, M. & Yoon, J. (2022). Variapsody: Creating three interactive music listening experiences that use diversified positive emotion regulation strategies to promote subjective well-being.  CHI’22 Late-Breaking Work on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW 2022). ACM. New Orleans, LA, USA. Download

Over the past decade, initiatives to design for subjective well-being have gained increased attention and momentum in design research. These initiatives often draw from positive psychology to explore ways of making Positive Psychology Interventions (PPIs) more effective through technology. This paper explores how a mix of tangible and digital technology can realize activity-focused, diverse emotion regulation for its users. We propose that emotion regulation strategies can serve as a principle for designing technology that encourages users to savor, modify, reassess, or commemorate their experiences. By centering the design around music listening experiences, the paper demonstrates how users can be supported to overcome motivation hurdles that get in the way of frequent engagement with a PPI. Variapsody is a device that enriches music listening with three features, each deploying a different set of emotion regulation strategies that make the experience more enjoyable and meaningful. Variapsody’s regulatory diversity offers users the choice of how to approach music listening and expands their repertoire of ER strategies. The first feature, Reaction Tile, inscribes users’ reactions to music onto a tangible, domino-sized tile to encourage them to savor the music. The second is Monofilter, which purposefully muffles the salience of background music while working on a cognitively demanding task. Vibelist is the third feature that helps users capture and revisit the context of music listening experiences in a digital collage. The paper discusses the lessons learned and future research opportunities.

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Violating aesthetic principles as means to influence usage behaviors

Publication

  • Welgoss, B. & Yoon, J. (2021). It’s ugly. That’s why it works beautifully: An exploratory study using design strategies to violate aesthetic principles as means to influence usage behaviors. Designing Interactive Systems. ACM. Download.

This project explores how aesthetic violation can be used to influence a user’s behavior when interacting with a product. Aesthetic violation occurs when the elements of a design purposely deviate from the aesthetic expectations of the user in order to encourage a behavioral response. This draws from the theory of processing fluency, which suggests that aesthetic perceptions are a function of a perceiver’s processing dynamics—the more fluently a perceiver can process an object, the higher the aesthetic response. In this instance, the desire for fluent processing may incite users to escape, minimize, or counteract the violation. The project offers insights into the benefits and relevance of aesthetic violation, strategy formation, and integration into the design process.

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Master thesis defense: Bethany Welgoss, MA

On July 29, 2021, Bethany Welgoss, MA successfully defended her master thesis entitled “It’s ugly. That’s why it works beautifully: An exploratory study using design strategies to violate aesthetic principles as means to influence usage behaviors”. The thesis was supervised by Dr. Jay Yoon of Design+Environmental Analysis and Dr. Manoj Thomas of SC Johnson College of Business.

Abstract
This thesis explores how aesthetic violation can be used to influence a user’s behavior when interacting with a product. Aesthetic violation occurs when the elements of a design purposely deviate from the aesthetic expectations of the user in order to encourage a behavioral response. This draws from the theory of processing fluency, which suggests that aesthetic perceptions are a function of a perceiver’s processing dynamics—the more fluently a perceiver can process an object, the higher the aesthetic response. In this instance, the desire for fluent processing may incite users to escape, minimize, or counteract the violation. A literature review and two workshops were conducted: (1) to generate design strategies and (2) to assess and refine them. The workshops provided insights into the benefits and relevance of aesthetic violation, strategy formation, and integration into the design process.