Wellbeing Supportive Design Toolkit

18/5/2023

Wellbeing Supportive Design Toolkit

A toolkit for technology-makers interested in applying wellbeing psychology to design. The content draws on decades of research in psychology and the toolkit has been tested with over 100 designers and researchers from across the world.

Contents:

Workshop - Design for Wellbeing Workshop
Cards - Wellbeing Design Cards
Checklist - Heuristics checklist
Cheatsheet - Design Strategies cheatsheet
Prompts - Prompt Sheet for ideation
Measures - Questionnaires for measuring impact

1. Workshop

Design for Wellbeing Workshop - This 'Playboard' (something between a gameboard and a playbook), in the form of a free Miro template, can be used to guide a group through an educational collaborative workshop on wellbeing supportive design (no facilitator required.)

How to: Grab your team and learn how to support wellbeing in all your technology projects. This 2-hour DIY online workshop includes videos, tools and hands-on activities and takes no preparation. Just grab 1-4 people and jump in. All materials and instructions are built into the board! The workshop has been refined with feedback from 60+ design professionals and is used as part of responsible design training at Imperial College London.
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2. Design Cards

Wellbeing Design Cards - Deck of 30 cards that brings together the heuristics, design strategies and key research concepts into a set of insights for ideation, collaboration and design. In 4 suits (psychological needs, spheres of experience, diagnosis and strategies) these cards give quick and easy access to the core concepts of wellbeing psychology as applied to technology with real-world examples.

How to: Download the cards to print and use as guidance for evaluation, ideation and enhancement.

Print-at-home (PDF) or Order Card Deck online
Printing instructions
How to use

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3. Heuristics Checklist

This Heuristics checklist (PDF) includes a checklist of 15 heuristics for wellbeing supportive design.
How to: Use as you would usability heuristics, to evaluate a design to help spot design features that may be hindering wellbeing.
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4. Strategies Cheatsheet

The Strategies cheatsheet (PDF) includes 30 design strategy examples that demonstrate various ways (almost design patterns) that the 15 Wellbeing Supportive Design heuristics can be supported within specific contexts.
How to: Consult when you're looking for design ideas to improve support for psychological needs in your technology.
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5. Prompt sheet

The Prompt sheet (PDF) includes trigger questions for prompting design ideation and evaluation from the perspective of psychological wellbeing. These can also be reformulated as 'How might we' questions.
How to: Use as quick prompts for ideating new products or enhancing existing technology experiences.
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6. Measures

The Motivation, Engagement and Thriving in User Experience (METUX) scales comprise 5 questionnaires for measuring basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration within 5 spheres of technology experience (adoption, interface, task, behavior, and life)(Peters, Calvo & Ryan, 2018). These scales consider both need satisfaction and frustration as part of user experience and are designed to be applied at different granularities (spheres) of that experience. This is because satisfactions and frustrations can co-occur simultaneously within different spheres. The overall goal is to capture a sense of the impact of technology experience on wellbeing via psychological needs and can be used as a measure of user satisfaction, engagement and psychological impact.
How to: Use to measure the impact a technology is having on basic psychological needs (and therefore on wellbeing).