Project Title: Investigating Design Opportunities for Work-Life Balance Technologies
Brief Description: This project seeks to investigate, through a combination of conceptual and empirical research, how people can use digital technologies to negotiate work-life boundaries, so as to achieve some balance between work and life matters. In so doing, it aims at advancing knowledge in the design of technology for work-life balance. It will explore digital tools that allow individuals to coordinate their work and manage their personal lives from various places, times, and contexts.
This research intends to help create new and innovative solutions that can improve existing practices or even create new ones. The project will include a systematic literature review, a contextual study, a series of design actions predicated on Participatory Design (PD), and an appropriation study, to investigate the extent to which digital technologies can support people in dealing with issues of work-life balance. More information will be made available via dedicated links as the project progresses.
Call for Participation – Appropriation Study
I warmly invite you to participate in a three-month appropriation study exploring how mobile technology can support boundary awareness and work–life balance (WLB) negotiation through workload visualization.
This study forms part of my PhD research, which investigates how digital technologies mediate work–life boundaries, particularly in the context of academic work. The mobile application developed for this study allows participants to visualize aspects of their workload and reflect on how workload may influence their work–life boundaries and everyday negotiations.
I am currently inviting new participants to join the ongoing study. Your participation will provide additional perspectives and experiences that will help broaden our understanding of how academics appropriate and experience technology for boundary awareness and WLB negotiation.
What does participation involve?
Participation involves using the mobile application on your smartphone for approximately three months. You can join the study at any time, as the study is already underway.
Privacy is a key consideration in the study. No data collected by the application leaves your phone. The application is designed so that the information remains locally on your device.
During the three-month period, the researcher will briefly engage with you every two weeks for approximately 5–10 minutes to discuss your experience with the application and gather feedback on how the workload visualization could better support your awareness and negotiation of work–life boundaries.
At the end of the three-month period, you will also be invited to participate in an interview to reflect more extensively on your experience using the application, including how it influenced your awareness of workload and boundaries and how the technology could be improved to better support WLB negotiation.
Your experiences will contribute to our understanding of how technology can become part of everyday practices of recognizing, negotiating, and managing work–life boundaries.
Read more about the artefact design study in this information letter.
Your experiences and perspectives would be incredibly valuable, particularly as they will bring new perspectives to the ongoing study. I would greatly appreciate your participation.
Thank you, and I look forward to the possibility of having you join the study.
If you would like to participate in this study, kindly complete the form below. Participants will be selected to ensure a diversity of academic roles and experiences.
Reference
[1] Markus Rohde, Peter Brödner, Gunnar Stevens, Matthias Betz, and Volker Wulf. 2017. Grounded Design-a praxeological IS research perspective. Journal of Information Technology 32, 163–179. https://doi.org/10.1057/jit.2016.5