Abstract
Abstract Improving Digital Wellbeing with and for Teens: A Gamified and Personalized Intelligent System (DIGI-Teens) addressed the growing societal and educational challenge of promoting a more conscious and balanced use of digital technologies among adolescents. While existing technological solutions for digital wellbeing mainly rely on self-monitoring, timers, and restriction mechanisms, recent research highlights the importance of educational approaches that foster awareness, reflection, and personal growth. In response, DIGI-Teens aimed to design, implement, and evaluate a novel web-based gamified platform to support digital wellbeing education in schools and other educational contexts. Grounded in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), participatory design, gamification, End-User Development (EUD), and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the project investigated whether a gamified intelligent platform co-designed with and for teenagers could improve digital wellbeing through learning paths defined by teachers. To address this research question, the project adopted a participatory approach involving high-school students aged 16–18, teachers, educators, and researchers. Through literature reviews, teacher surveys, and co-design activities conducted with Italian high schools, the project identified requirements, needs, values, and educational practices related to digital wellbeing. The resulting system consists of a teacher-oriented web application and a student-oriented mobile application connected through shared data and synchronisation mechanisms. Teachers can create and personalise gamified learning paths focused on digital wellbeing, while students engage in educational activities combining reflection, self-assessment, gamification, and personalised interactions. The platform adapts learning experiences according to educational contexts and pedagogical goals, supporting meaningful and engaging wellbeing-oriented learning. Results Achieved The DIGI-Teens platform was evaluated through a multi-stage process including both formative and summative assessments. An initial in-the-lab evaluation investigated usability, appropriateness, and user experience, leading to iterative refinements of the platform. Subsequently, a large-scale in-the-wild evaluation was conducted with high-school students in authentic educational settings. The results confirmed the potential of the proposed approach to foster awareness and reflection on smartphone use among teenagers. Findings showed that reflective activities, gamified learning experiences, self-assessment instruments, and teacher-driven personalisation can effectively support digital wellbeing education. The evaluations also generated design implications, best practices, and recommendations for future educational technologies in this domain. The project produced three major outcomes. First, it delivered a fully functional proof-of-concept platform for digital wellbeing education, co-designed, implemented, and evaluated in collaboration with local high schools, and released as open-source software under an Apache 2.0 licence. Second, it provided comprehensive formative and summative evaluations demonstrating the feasibility, usability, and educational value of the proposed solution. Third, it generated a consolidated set of design guidelines, paradigms, and lessons learned for the development of gamified and personalised educational systems aimed at supporting digital wellbeing. Beyond its scientific contributions, DIGI-Teens fostered the creation of an active research and practitioner community around digital wellbeing for teenagers. Dissemination activities included a dedicated project website, public open-source repositories, the organisation of the international workshop Digital Wellbeing for Teens: Designing Educational Systems at AVI 2024, publications at leading HCI venues including ACM CHI 2025, participation in the European Night of Researchers, and the guest editing of a special issue on digital wellbeing education. Overall, the project demonstrated how participatory design, gamification, personalisation, and intelligent technologies can be effectively integrated to support digital wellbeing education, providing both a validated technological solution and a strong foundation for future research and practice in this increasingly important field.
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Catia Prandi
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Informatica - Scienza e Ingegneria
Coordinatore:
Politecnico di TORINO(Italy)
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 75.827,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 29
Data di inizio
28/09/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
