International Workshop on Wellbeing-aware Digital Design

The workshop is initiating collaborative research partnership with a peer (or peers) in Africa, Asia, or the LAC regions It will focus on how development of technology should be considered in research and education according to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Keynote speaker and the trainer will be Prof. Raian Ali, Professor in Information and Computing Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), Qatar

Digital media are equipped with powerful influence and persuasion techniques, which can increase users’ engagement and retention, but at the same time, can be questioned for hurting users’ wellness.

Interestingly, technology offers an unprecedented opportunity for tools around assisting behavioural change and promoting a more regulated usage style. It can be designed to capture data around the (digital) behaviour and use them to derive interactive intervention techniques and issue them intelligently.

This keynote will summarise the research around the topic and argue the case for the Responsibility by Design concept in which tech companies are asked to empower users and their surrogate parties (social or technical) with data and tools to regulate their digital usage and be meaningfully informed about it and meet the emerging requirement of Digital Wellbeing. The speaker will present recent projects conducted closely with charities, policymakers and the tech industry in the UK, Europe and Qatar, and the policy change achieved through them.

Program Layout

13.00-13.20: Opening remarks, Introduction to workshop objectives and participants

Dr Sanaul Haque, Department of Software Engineering, LUT School of Engineering Science, LUT University, Finland

Prof. Timo Jämsä, Professor in Medical Technology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu, Finland)

Prof. Kari Smolander, Professor of Software Engineering, LUT School of Engineering Science, and Head of Software Engineering Doctoral Program, LUT University, Finland

Prof. Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Professor of Information Systems Science, Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, University of Oulu, and Dean of University of Oulu Graduate School, Finland

13.20-14.00: Session One - Keynote speech on Wellbeing-aware Digital Design, Q&A

Prof. Raian Ali, Professor of Information and Computing Technology, College of Science and Engineering, Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar.

14.00-14.40: Session Two - Large data set shown to participants: questionnaires/tasks from the participants, quiz: impact of the social-mediated technology, comparison, data set, Q&A.

14.40-14.50: Session Three - How to make collaboration and partnership with HBKU and universities in Qatar (research and project collaborations, students-staff exchange, teaching, funding schemes, and other actions etc.), Q&A.

14.50-15.00: Q&A and Closing remarks

Please register by 28th November at the latest. The participation zoom link can be found here.

For further information, please get in touch with Dr Sanaul Haque, email: md.haque@lut.fi.

The workshop is jointly organized by the Research Unit of Medical Imaging, Physics and Technology (MIPT) at the University of Oulu, Finland, and the Department of Software Engineering at LUT University, Finland. The workshop is supported in part by the FinCEAL Plus BRIDGES project.

Welcome!

About the Speaker and Trainer:

Dr Raian Ali’s research has an inter-disciplinary nature, and his work on Digital Addiction and Digital Wellbeing has been widely featured by mainstream media, including the BBC, Telegraph, Huffington Post, and La Stampa. He gives speeches and provides consultancy on the topic both nationally and internationally. Dr Ali has received the Marie Curie CIG grant and other grants from prestigious sponsors in the UK and Europe for work in areas he has pioneered, e.g., software social adaptation and designing to combat digital addiction. He sits on the editorial board and organises program committees to lead international conferences and journals in information systems, software engineering, and behavioural and social informatics. He has published over 120 articles.