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Doctoral thesis defense: Youngsoo Shin, PhD

On October 30, 2023, Youngsoo Shin successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Supporting users’ behavioral decision-making experiences through personalized human-technology interactions.” The thesis was advised by Dr. Jay Yoon of Human Centered Design, Dr. Wendy Ju of Cornell Tech, and Dr. Geoffrey Fisher of SC Johnson College of Business.

Dr. Youngsoo Shin recently accepted and started an assistant professorship atPace University, NY. Congratulations, Dr. Shin!

Summary
Influencing user behavior has been increasingly stated as an explicit design objective in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and design research. However, designers often face difficulties in their practices resulting from users’ different preferences about how they are guided to certain behaviors to perform when using computing systems (e.g., managing tasks and schedules through a calendar app and choosing movies to watch on a streaming service). In terms of people’s decision-making styles, some users—maximizers—desire to have an array of options to get the very best out of the decision, but in the same situation, other users—satisficers—tend to be pleased to settle for a good enough option. It is conceivable that this individual difference should manifest when interacting with computing systems, strongly influencing users’ experiences. However, there has been little empirical research available about if and how different decision-making styles affect users’ behavioral decision-making experiences in this technology use. To fill this gap, this doctoral dissertation aims to advance our understanding of how users’ decision-making styles affect their experiences in technology use and their implications for design. This dissertation explores how users’ behavioral decision-making experiences can be supported through computing systems, especially focusing on the concept of personalized interactions. Using Research through Design (RtD) as an overarching approach, this research develops an understanding of how users’ different decision-making styles affect their experiences in technology use and the implications of these tendencies for design (Thread 1). This research also explores how users’ behavioral decision-making experiences can be supported through design, especially at the intersection of user experience (UX) design and behavioral intervention technology (Thread 2). Further, this research develops a new approach to supporting users’ daily decision-making in technology use by conducting a series of deployment studies (Thread 3).

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MDTL’s design workshop with Ithaca Youth Bureau

On July 18th, MDTL’s Jay Yoon and Jeremy Faulk held a workshop in collaboration with the Ithaca Youth Bureau for 22 middle school students. The goal of the workshop was to increase awareness of the positive and negative impact that everyday technologies have on our emotions, behaviors, and well-being. These students are part of the College Discovery Program (CDP), a long-term mentoring and academic support program aimed at reducing achievement gaps and increasing access to college education.

The article on the workshop is available online.

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MDTS’s research on sustainable well-being introduced by Cornell Chronicle

On January 4, 2013, Cornell Chronicle published an article introducing the MDTL’s research on the relationship between product attachment and sustainable behavior, recently published in the International Journal of Design. The research looks into the factors influencing the increase of product attachment and how they differently affect how people retain, use, and discard their cherished products in the long run, discussing the implications for sustainability. The research is part of Micheal Kowalski’s work on designing for psychological well-being and environmental sustainability.

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Roundtable discussion—International Meeting Challenges in Design Education

On November 8, 2022, MDTL’s Jay Yoon participated in the roundtable discussion of the International Forum on Challenges in Design Education, hosted by the School of Industrial Design of the Faculty of Architecture, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

The discussion was moderated by Prof. Juan Carlos Ortiz Nicolás. The topics were on:

  • Current and future challenges in design education
  • Pedagogy approaches for multi- and trans-disciplinary projects embedded in postgraduate and undergraduate programs.
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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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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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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.

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Seeking workshop participants: designing rich experiences in the science museum

MB-workshop
How do we design surprising, confusing, or even frustrating experiences that people can still enjoy?
How can we ensure these experiences are truly accessible?

Sometimes user disorientation can be a good thing.
Science museums know this well – designing exhibits to challenge and confound visitors is a great way to promote deeper engagement and learning. But the way these experiences are designed often excludes blind and visually impaired visitors.
We’re working to identify tools and strategies to help designers create these rich, challenging experiences – without an over-reliance on visual content.

If you have experience designing for emotion, play, learning, or accessibility, and are interested in collaborating with other designers, we invite you to participate in our research. We’ll be hosting two (remote) workshops in May and June to explore and test design strategies for accessible, rich learning experiences in the museum.

Interested in participating, or learning more about the project?
Contact Michael Brigham at mab654@cornell.edu