There is a trend towards self-optimization using applications designed to help users optimize their sleep, be better organized, improve their sport activities, or avoid distractions at work. Some of them use physiological parameters for their recommendations. At the same time, working life and organizational cultures increasingly encourage individuals to control and optimize themselves. In such a context, digital devices using biometric data may gain currency and be used to further increase the working pressure on employees. However, these tools may also help to protect employees’ health precisely under conditions of work intensification and increasing stress levels. To achieve such a humanizing effect, however, a conscious and goal-oriented design of technology and specific social contexts of use are needed.

ShapeTech will explore the design options and usage contexts of self-monitoring tools aiming at humanization of work. In doing so, it will analyze how employees various work environments may use self-monitoring tools to become aware of stressful situations at work, to share their experiences in occupational health circles and to develop suggestions for improvements of work situations including the tools used. Based on assumptions of the social shaping of technology, the project will thus promote humanized design and usage of tools for self-monitoring currently gaining currency and, at the same time, use these tools to support the humanization of highly digitized work.