Belongingness

Humans have a natural need for meaningful social connections — belongingness (Baumeister and Leary, 1995). These are important to happiness and wellness. We seek lasting, positive relationships and try to form new bonds when separated from loved ones. In our studies, the need for belongingness was a major reason participants engaged with our prototypes.

When users see belongingness as a possible outcome of using a personal informatics tool, they are more likely to engage with it and benefit from the healthy behavior the tools promote. Belongingness is closely tied to relatedness in Self-Determination Theory, which says people are more motivated when they feel connected to others (Ryan and Deci, 2000).

Process

When a user foresees belongingness, they are likely to have positive outcome expectations using the digital health tool. The dotted line shows the hypothesized relationship.

Design Recommendations

Recommendation 4.1. Support frequent, low-stakes social interactions
Building meaningful connections requires frequent, casual interactions, which can be supported through online tools like chat groups (Kairam et al., 2022). Using community-specific symbols, like custom emojis, can further strengthen these connections and community identity (Sheng and Kairam, 2020).

Recommendation 4.2. Allow users to express care for others
Belongingness can also grow when users are able to show care for others. This can happen through digital actions like sending supportive messages, chatting, or using simple symbols like “likes” to express encouragement.

Recommendation 4.3. Allow for relationship evolution
Relationships naturally change over time, which affects feelings of belongingness. Since personal connections can grow or fade, future personal informatics systems should be designed to adapt to these shifting dynamics (Murnane et al. 2018).

Further Reading

• H. Saksono, C. Castaneda-Sceppa, J. Hoffman, V. Morris, M. S. El-Nasr, and A. G. Parker. 2020. Storywell: Designing for family fitness app motivation by using social rewards and reflection. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI ’20). 1–30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376686
• H. Saksono, A. Ranade, G. Kamarthi, C. Castaneda-Sceppa, J. A. Hoffman, C. Wirth, and A. G. Parker. 2015. Spaceship launch: Designing a collaborative exergame for families. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW ’15). 1776–1787. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675159

References

• R. F. Baumeister and M. R. Leary. 1995. The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin. 117, 3 (1995), 497–529. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.117.3.497
• S. R. Kairam, M. C. Mercado, and S. A. Sumner. 2022. A social-ecological approach to modeling sense of virtual community (SOVC) in livestreaming communities. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 6, CSCW2 (Nov. 2022), 1–35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3555081
• E. L. Murnane, T. G. Walker, B. Tench, S. Voida, and J. Snyder. 2018. Personal informatics in interpersonal contexts: Towards the design of technology that supports the social ecologies of long-term mental health management. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 2, CSCW (2018), 1–27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3274396
• R. M. Ryan and E. L. Deci. 2000. Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. The American Psychologist 55, (2000), 68–78. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X. 55.1.68
• J. T. Sheng and S. R. Kairam. 2020. From virtual strangers to IRL friends: Relationship development in livestreaming communities on twitch. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 4, CSCW2 (Oct. 2020), 1–34. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3415165