Category: Wellbeing

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Studio Gryphire

Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise
of the human imagination.

Daniel Bell — The WINDING PASSAGE

In addition to the out-there projects I love to engage in on the side, I deeply enjoy helping other teams with research and/or design challenges, especially around technology and wellbeing. Through Studio Gryphire, which consists of a Design and a Research division—although the two may well often combine in a delicious swirl of goodness—I provide freelance services in both of these areas.

At the core of Studio Gryphire lies ensuring that human flourishing and wellbeing are supported. That is why in both my design ánd my research work I focus on projects that relate to human wellbeing and aim to—either directly or indirectly—augment and support the human experience. That is the heart of Studio Gryphire.

Interested in what I can do for you?

Hit me up!

Design for Good

In my design work I support teams, companies and individuals with graphic and digital product design. Through my experience creating and designing both graphic material as well as user experiences, my aim is to ensure the intended message or experience reaches its destination. Looking for a logo, illustrations, a refreshed brand identity? Or are you developing an app or game for which you want to ensure human-centric, evidence-based design? I’m your gal.

Research for Good

Much like with my design work, the research support I provide for project teams, institutes and organizations varies vastly depending on needs and goals. With my expertise in a wide range of research methods and analytics, I help projects that aim to support human flourishing build a strong scientific and UX evidence-base for their product. My work ranges from literature research and study design to UX research execution, analysis, and beyond.

STUDIO GRYPHIRE
KvK / Chamber of Commerce No.: 90237234
Arnhem | Netherlands

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The birth of Excavo

The past year has been interesting, to say the least. I am happy to say, though, that my past 12 months have not only been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, I’ve learned a lot of new things and experienced a lot of new things in my PhD in these last 12 months. As you’ve been able to read in an earlier post, Quality Zooming, doing focus groups with young adults has been an awesome part of that.

Why, exactly, was I doing focus groups, you may ask? Well, as it happens, the start of the pandemic coincided—for me—with the birth of a new project, one that is a part of my PhD and yet is much more than that. This project, called Excavo, will require more than one post to explain everything, but I’m excited to finally be sharing some details about what Excavo is, and how it came to be.

Let’s start with its origin story. In my research at GEMH Lab, I’ve focused on youth social media use. Specifically, I’m interested in what young people do on social media, why they do it, and how it makes them feel. Early on in my PhD, I’ve made it my mission to get detailed, reliable data and I’ve had the pleasure of conducting intensive interviews with many young adults about the specifics of their social media use. I found it especially striking that young adults are generally drawn to social media, but afterwards may feel like they have wasted their time. This may seem like an obvious thing, but if you think about it, it suggests that there’s something weird going on.

Obviously social media offer tons of opportunities. In theory, social media present us with the opportunity to keep in touch with friends, find new friends, find jobs, share and find interests, find entertainment and develop our identities. However, as The Social Dilemma on Netflix has illustrated, there are some serious and valid concerns regarding how social media are designed. The young people I spoke to indicated they feel like they’re hardly in control of how much time they spend on social media, and how they spend this time. Notifications, an endless ever-refreshing feed and other design aspects of social media are part of the problem, but—call me cynical—I don’t think we’ll be able to change existing social media anytime soon. Putting aside all the theory behind what makes for good wellbeing (spoiler, a sense of agency (i.e., being in control of your choices) is important), it is clear that some (not all!) adolescents struggle with their relationship with social media, and something needs to be done.

From this realisation, Excavo (Latin: “I unearth”) was born. I’m beyond excited that this second half of my PhD I got the chance to turn science and data into something tangible and practical. Having gathered all these insights from over a hundred interviews with young adults, we decided to create a digital tool to help young adults take matters into their own hands and regain control of their relationship with social media. A crucial part of this app is about helping young people reflect on how their time on social media is spent exactly, and whether or not this is in line with what they find important and interesting in life.

Of course, this isn’t only tricky to know for our target audience, 17-25 year olds. Figuring out what you want and value in life ánd living by those things can be hard for anyone, which is why I hope that even if you’re not a young adult anymore, you’ll let me know in the comments what you think of our endeavour. (: I look forward to sharing more about Excavo in the future.

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Be our guest

Last month, we launched an awesome new initiative at the GEMH Lab, which I’m proud to be involved in. As a lab focused on games and digital tech for wellbeing, we get to talk to a bunch of interesting, open-minded people on a regular basis. We decided it’d be great to share the fascinating talks we get from those people with a wider audience, and so the GEMH Sessions were born!

Our very first GEMH Session, featuring Monobanda‘s co-founder Niki Smit, took place on February 19th, and was an awesome experience! Hosting a live event is always scary, but my frolleague Joanneke Weerdmeester did an awesome job! The GEMH Sessions were conceived with the intention to bring together (and provide a spotlight for) people working on creating digital tools for good, at the intersection of design, art, science, entrepreneurship, and clinical practice.

Niki was a great first guest, as he told us about the inspiring play-oriented projects he has been working on, and showed us an exciting new project that can enable you to dance with yourself! Curious? Make sure to check out the GEMH Session if you want to hear more about Niki’s wonderful projects.

We’re looking forward to hosting many more GEMH Sessions with equally inspiring guests. The next GEMH Session will take place in May, so stay tuned for more details!

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Emotions II

In my previous blog, I gave a short intro to some of the thoughts psychologists and neuroscientists had in the 19th century around the emergence of emotions. However, with a new century came new ideas, and the 1920s saw Walter Cannon and Philip Bard directly challenge the James-Lange theory. Instead of emotions following from physical reactions, they proposed that our physiological responses, such as trembling or breathing rapidly, are in fact independent from emotions and simply occur simultaneously.

To translate this to our earlier example, imagine that you are walking down a new dark and empty street when again you suddenly hear someone trailing behind you. According to the Cannon-Bard theory of emotion, you start feeling afraid and at the same time your heart starts to race, largely independently from each other. They asserted that emotions can be experienced without the presence of physiological responses, and that a theory of emotion should reflect this.

Both theories have been heavily criticised, but as always there seem to be bits of truth hidden in both. In an attempt to integrate the two approaches, more recent theories of emotion (such as the two-factor theory proposed by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer in the 1960s) attempt to highlight the role physiology plays in the formation and experience of emotions while still accounting for the fact that physiological reactions such as trembling are not specific to one particular emotion but instead are similar for multiple different emotions.

There are many more theories around emotions, such as James Gross’ emotion regulation theory, which I may write a blog about some time in the future.. One thing is for sure: whether physiological reactions generate emotions or just accompany them – emotions usually serve a certain function. Understanding what your body is trying to tell you will help you understand yourself and your environment, making life just a little bit easier. (:

An earlier version of this blog post can be found on the GEMH Lab website. Here, I have updated that post slightly.

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Emotions I

The relationship between our bodies and our minds has fascinated me since I started my education in Psychology. Unsurprisingly, the mind-body relationship is incredibly complex, and one of the most profound examples of this mysterious interaction is the phenomenon of emotions; specifically where they come from.

In this ultra-short two-part blog series I want to delve a little into some theories around how our emotions come to be. It’s not really a subject exclusively related to our digital lives, but since we do experience plenty of emotions on digital platforms I figured I could get away with it. (; Emotions are such a ubiquitous part of our lives that I couldn’t help but wonder; how is something so real and yet so intangible as emotions connected to a bunch of human body cells?

Although the definition of ’emotion’ is still very much debated, emotions are generally thought of as complex feelings of which one is usually conscious, and which are related to psychological and physical changes in the mind and body, respectively. Although they don’t always influence behaviour (but very well might), emotions will almost always influence a person’s thoughts, and are thus a very powerful phenomenon of human psychology.

However, how do emotions arise? And how are these complex psychological states related to our body? It turns out, that – as with the definition itself – the generation of emotions is a topic of controversy as well. In fact, with regard to the question of how emotions arise, there are two starkly opposing camps.

19th Century scientists William James and Carl Lange simultaneously yet independently from each other proposed an account of emotions that is now known as the James-Lange theory of emotion. According to this theory, emotions arise in the following way: imagine that you are walking down a dark and empty street, and suddenly you hear someone trailing behind you. James and Lange would say that you have perceived a certain stimulus, in this case the sound of footsteps, and that your body shows a physiological response to this stimulus: your heart starts to race. According to James and Lange, you then interpret this physiological reaction in a certain way, namely as fear, which results in you feeling afraid. In other words, this theory proposes that people have a physiological response to events in their environment, and that their interpretation of this physical reaction results in the experience of an emotion.

However, that’s only one side to the story. In the second and final part of this little series about emotions I’ll go into a completely different view on the matter, so stay tuned. In the meantime, let me know what you think of the James-Lange theory — would you agree that the emotion you feel is just a matter of how you interpret your body?

An earlier version of this blog post can be found on the GEMH Lab website. Here, I have updated that post slightly.

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We need to do social media justice

Yay! I’m happy to announce that my latest paper, written together with my awesome supervisors, has been officially published in the new APA journal Technology, Mind and Behavior! The paper, titled Toward Improved Methods in Social Media Research, has been a culmination of the literature review I started in the beginning of my PhD project, and I’m happy to see this labour of love out in the world.

What once started as a ‘nice-to-have’ overview of the studies that have been done in the field of social media use and wellbeing, turned into a (critical) discussion of the way in which this research has been done so far. And guess what — you get what you give.

Meaning, if we approach a complex phenomenon like digital tech use (and social media use, specifically) with no level of detail, we get no level of detail back in terms of insight. Unfortunately, that level of detail has been missing in many studies on social media use and wellbeing so far. It’s not all bad, though, and it’s definitely not too late to learn from our mistakes.

However, what was most important to me and my co-authors was to make sure that we contributed to solving the problems as well. So, crucially, what started as a review turned into a — hopefully helpful — collection of concrete suggestions for how we could do better in the future! If we employ more detailed, sensitive and flexible research methods (which unfortunately will require greater effort on our part), we will inevitably gain better insights.

Research is tough, and the only way to move forward is to acknowledge the difficulties we face when researching such complex phenomena. (: The paper is open access, which means you can read all of it without having to pay for it, so please feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.

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Person-centric AI

During my time at the GEMH Lab I’ve become more and more interested in the relationship that people have with technology. Not only in terms of ‘how do we use it’ and ‘what can we do with it’, but also how technology has been inspired by us.

In particular artificial intelligence is meant to mimic us in some ways (and do better than us, in others). However, recently I’ve come to believe that we’re not inspiring artificial intelligence and digital social technology to a large enough extent, and I’ll explain what I mean in a second.

When you Google ‘person-centric’ (or ‘human-centric’/’people-centric’) AI, you get pages that refer to making AI understandable for humans. Although this is an important task (especially in the light of worries that we might be losing our grip on artificial intelligence and what it does), I was surprised to read that this is apparently what the Internet says that ‘person-centric AI’ is.

What about the psychology that goes into these tools, though? How do we strive to make sure that what we build is not just convenient and efficient, but also in line with our understanding of human psychology? Is the field of AI sufficiently sensitive to theories about human psychology? I’m getting the sense that it isn’t (but feel free to prove me wrong, see the end of my post ;).

Why does it matter? Because in order for human beings to benefit the most from technology, it needs to be sensitive to their needs. Things like preservation of the sense of agency, for instance, seem to be rarely taken into account, following an ‘aren’t you happy someone/something is doing it for you?’-approach. However, a loss of sense of agency can not only lead to reluctance to use a certain technological tool, it can also lead to decreased life satisfaction. In a world where we are increasingly surrounded by (AI) technologies and tools, such considerations are as vital as ever.

I’m thinking… that I’d really like to work towards building AI tools that make sense from a human psychological perspective. We need to consider the human mind behind every AI tool, and this is something that – at least, so it seems – is still underrepresented in the field of artificial intelligence. However, if you read this and are working on such an approach to AI, hit me up — I’d love to hear about your work!

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Share the load

The emergence of social networks (all the way back in 1999 with platforms like LiveJournal and SixDegrees) has provided people all around the world with an opportunity to share information about themselves and get to know people from across the country, and eventually, the globe.

Networks such as Facebook (2004), and Instagram (2010) have evolved to allow its users to share as much information about themselves as they would like (or wouldn’t like). Photos, videos, locations, activities and even feelings can be shared, in addition to the more recent 2016 feature of being able to live stream what you’re doing through Facebook. And we, being the social and curious creatures that we are, have thrown ourselves at this plethora of information like there’s no tomorrow. We want to know how others are doing, ánd we want to show the rest of the world how wé are doing, and that’s where the situation gets interesting.

We don’t want to just show the world how we’re doing. We want to show the world how well we’re doing. Photos are edited, stories embellished and scenes are directed. And all of that is completely understandable. Societies (not just human ones) revolve around its members’ social status and we, as members of the human society, want to be found important, interesting and worth paying attention to. 

Others are doing the exact same thing. They, too, want to be seen as the coolest, prettiest and most interesting they could possibly be. And this is precisely where social media can become a source of serious self-doubt. The content posted on social networks by other users is often carefully moderated and produced, and yet that is the only thing we see. Whereas we know exactly how mundane and glamour-less our own lives are in reality, the only snapshots we are presented with from others’ lives are exciting and vibrant. If their lives are so cool and interesting, then what are we doing wrong? Why are we not having all that fun? 

But are those moments of (feigned?) bliss and perfection the only things that matter to us? Of course not! At the GEMH Lab we think that a key part of mental health is how we talk to others about our lives, our stories. Formulating and sharing authentic life stories (i.e., true to your interests and experiences) with others can be a major source of increased mental health. In fact, the lack of such authentic story-telling behaviours on social media might be the driving force behind some of the negative associations and experiences that are reported in relation to social media use.

However, the tide is turning! For instance, a new trend has recently developed in academic circles: sharing your CV of failures. Rather than portraying all your accomplishments and glossing over the bumps in the road that you’ve experienced, academics are now encouraged to share with others their real experiences, including all of the times they were rejected for a job, or didn’t get a grant.

Such public acknowledgements help (young) people all around the globe realise that – as my (Russian) mother loves to say – “красота в контрасте” (“krasota v kontraste“): beauty lies in the contrast. Sure, we experience many highs, but those highs only mean so much because we also know the lows. And we should share those lows more often.

At the GEMH Lab, we feel that this not only requires a shift in societal mindset (which is thankfully already happening), but also new digital environments that allow and encourage us to reflect on what is truly important to us, and share those stories with others in a safe (i.e., non-performative) and authentic way. I am very happy to say that we are currently on the way to designing such an environment, which is a project I hope to share more with you about in a later blog. Stay tuned!

An earlier version of this blog post can be found on the GEMH Lab website. Here, I have updated that post to match my current view.