Adopting a holistic, worker-centric approach to designing digital tools for supporting well-being at work

Today’s knowledge workers are increasingly stressed, distracted, and burned out. A growing number of digital tools – ranging from time trackers to distraction blockers – have emerged to support well-being at work. However, such tools often offer narrow, surface-level support that focuses on optimizing or controlling behaviour, overlooking deeper processes of self-reflection that lay the foundation for meaningful, self-determined change. In this dissertation, I explore a holistic, worker-centric approach for designing digital interventions that support well-being by fostering worker awareness, scaffolding reflection, and maintaining worker autonomy. I present four projects that span diverse work contexts and populations: two that apply this approach end-to-end – from intervention design to implementation to in-situ evaluation – and two that surface needs and challenges to further inform design. First, we developed a Therapy-inspired intervention that targets shifting workers’ perspectives of work towards one that is broader and more holistic. Through a comparative field study (n=24) with a baseline intervention, we found that the Therapy-inspired intervention broadened participants’ perspectives and helped them reflect on the connections between their emotions and workday activities. Second, Novecs is a system that provides personalized, non-normative feedback on body language and facial cues during videoconferencing calls. A field study (n=18) evaluated Novecs in participants’ real work meetings, finding that it increased self-awareness of non-verbal cues and the usefulness of the feedback varied by meeting type. Third, we characterize how technology can help mediate self-disclosure among colleagues – computer-mediated self-disclosure (CMSD) – to foster belonging in remote work. Through a survey (n=455) and interviews (n=12), we identified what information types workers value disclosing to their colleagues for team awareness, along with how to design for CMSD. Lastly, we extend our design approach through an inclusive lens, conducting interviews (n=27) to understand neurodivergent individuals’ experiences with distraction blockers, highlighting how greater awareness of diverse working styles can help users adapt these tools to better support their autonomy in managing focus. Together, these projects demonstrate the promise of a worker-centric approach to supporting well-being and offer design insights and opportunities for advancing holistic tools that work for the individual, rather than against them.