Interface Design and Employee Well-being in the Digital Workplace: The Role of Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction

Abstract

With digitalization, there is a growing need to address the well-being impact of digital tools used in the workplace to ensure the well-being of employees. Guided by the Motivation, Engagement, and Thriving in User Experience framework for well-being supportive technology design, this study examines the relationship between the interface and behaviour spheres of technology. This research aims to find how and whether basic psychological need satisfaction in the work domain is influenced by the need satisfaction experienced from interacting with work management digital tools (like slack). By intersecting Human–Computer Interaction and organizational psychology, the study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine how interface design influences individuals’ well-being in the workplace. Data collected from 418 IT employees were subjected to Structural Equation Modelling with Amos. With interface relatedness emerging as the strongest predictor, the results show that autonomy and relatedness satisfactions in the interface sphere of work management digital tools have a significant positive influence on users’ basic psychological need satisfaction at work, while competence satisfaction has no significant influence. The study suggests that designing work management digital tools with features that particularly support autonomy and meaningful relationships with colleagues will enhance employees’ psychological experience in the workplace and thereby their well-being. The non-significant effect of interface competence may be considered an indication of the need to explore the mediating effect of the task sphere in future research. Overall, the study underlines the need for careful design of work management digital tools to ensure employee well-being in the workplace.