DESIGNING FOR DIGITAL WELL-BEING

I have been thinking a lot about self-control and online time management lately, because in conducting my ethnographic study of active professional social networkers, I have found that:

Many of those who are at ease with their networking, have developed complex tactics to unplug and keep their behavior in check.  

Being active on twitter, Xing, foursquare, Dopplr, facebook, LinkedIn, email, etc can be distracting, but ‘balanced’ active social networkers, in some form or another, learn to strategically regulate these distractions (usually over the course of time).

A recent post on the blog Cognitive Design titled “Top survival skill in the 21st century” discusses self-control and the topic of designing for easy self-regulation.  I find this area to be incredibly interesting and increasingly important in this time of plenty.  A while back, I brought up designing for well-being in the CHI2010 sustainable design course and asked- Could designing ‘non-use time’ of a software or service be just as important as designing use-time?

I’m curious what the future holds for this area!