Developing Intentional Relationships with Technologies: Exploring Players’ Tension between Play and Non-play and Designing Built-in Interventions to Contribute to Digital Well-Being

ABSTRACT The dark side of technology, such as technology overuse, has received growing concern. Prior studies have developed a variety of stand-alone techniques to support technology non-use, but few have attempted to build interventions directly into technologies to regulate usage. My research seeks to address this issue in the context of games by exploring the relationship players intend to have with games, especially their desired balance between play and non-play, and designing built-in interventions in games to help support this relationship. I will conduct qualitative interviews to understand players’ ideal relationships with games, and quantitative experiments to investigate the impact of built-in interventions on such relationships. Through these investigations, I attempt to develop a theoretical framework to understand users’ intended relationship with technologies and provide guidance on intervention designs that contribute to digital well-being.