This paper discusses the research and design of a gamified well-being system based on augmented reality (AR) technology that aims to help remote workers form a healthy work-life balance in response to Covid-19. Remote work has been the new normal and future trend due to the prevailing pandemic. Based on interviews with 21 young remote workers, we found that although they enjoy the comfort of working from home, they encountered different levels of physical or mental health issues due to long working hours, lack of exercise, and staying in a single environment all the time. This application, called Nurturally, proposes a gamified plant nurturing system that grows with the user’s work-life regularity. The user’s journey and psychological need satisfaction within this design are further explained in the paper. By validating this design with a video prototype, 70% of the workers interviewed were willing to use this application when working from home.

It is generally acknowledged that great work environments improve well-being, while low-quality environments are detrimental to well-being. Flexible working, that is, the laborer's command over when and where they work, has expanded significantly across most industrialized nations. This type of work has become the norm, rather than the exception, in the context of Covid-19 when people face restrictions on being outside and assembling. Currently, remote work has been widely adopted by many companies to ensure safety. Although remote work is known to bring freedom, flexibility, and comfort, along with the benefits, it also brings longer working hours, loneliness, and a disappearing boundary between work and life. Individuals need to perceive and deal with the high-pressure environment that working from home might cause.

Regarding novelty of this study, very limited studies have been conducted over the condition of remote workers’ mental health. Furthermore, the study explore the AR technology potential in promoting wellbeing in remote workers, which has few been researched and developed. This conceptual study tries to fill the gap and attempts to explore the wellbeing system for the working community and business.

Given this context, augmented reality (AR) is a promising technology for the workplace and has the potential to enhance engagement. Augmented reality simulation provides another layer that augments the user’s experience of reality by overlaying virtual graphics on the physical environment. It is a calm technology that makes human–computer interaction hidden and invisible. Through the contextual knowledge of the user, the user’s attention is minimized, and the computing device runs in the background.

This paper proposes a work-life balance system based on augmented reality in the context of the pandemic, aiming at assisting users to maintain proper time management as well as healthy well-being while working from home. It outlines the design research of Nurturally, an ambient, glass-based AR gamified simulation designed to support balanced work from home. Our goal is to understand the potential of AR simulation systems in the context of remote work while also proposing an application concept — a nature nurturing system that can be used for incentivizing work–life balance. This system includes growing plants that help to visualize the user’s working progress and proper rest. Physical rewarding is also designed to motivate users in terms of balanced lifestyles. Our approach focuses on the double-diamond design process, which includes discovery, definition, development, and delivery.

This study innovated a new model of the work–life system to help lead a post-pandemic lifestyle. It is destined to create a rewarding culture embodied by share values and time to focus and create. Instead of separately dealing with work and life, this service bridges the two, putting them in the same system and connecting them with a nurture mechanism. Therefore, the developed interactive working medium is an AR application based on glasses that transforms a remote worker’s working process into a balanced, productive, and enjoyable experience. It is an independent AR application that is built for in-house use, where the users wear an AR glasses and use the system while working at home. The purpose is to help remote workers balance work and personal life at home, and eventually to form a new lifestyle in the context of Covid-19.

The concept design of the application system is based on gamification that incentivizes users to form healthy behaviors within an ambient and immersive environment. It is normal that gamification can encourage the commencement or continuation of objective coordinated conduct, such as motivation.

To analyze and investigate the motivational power of the above-mentioned application design elements, the psychological need satisfaction theory will be addressed in future research. Of the six principal perspectives of the theory , the self-determination perspective is chosen to analyze the elements in our AR application. The reason why this is chosen is that the self-determination perspective emphasizes the importance of the environment in fostering motivation. Advancing the context with components in our designed application, as gamification does by definition, directly adjusts that context, possibly influencing persuasive and mental user experiences. Three basic psychological and intrinsic needs are postulated within self-determination theory: the need for competence, the need for autonomy, and the need for social relatedness. The user journey, along with how this system incentivizes and motivates people from a psychological need perspective, will be described in five steps:

(1) Prepare for a productive day

Users begin their work day by putting on the AR glasses and starting the Nurturally system. The system will guide the user with a morning reflection, which encourages them to become mindful during the day. We have designed the system to help with a reminder to plan the breaks in the morning, with which users are guided to choose and plan what they prefer to do during the breaks.

After that, users are guided to make a to-do list of their daily tasks. The system will automatically provide recommendations for a suitable break cycle that batches their tasks according to different types of work. Nurturally syncs with the user’s calendar and it will suggest a feasible daily plan according to the user’s calendar.

(2) Focus on work.

The user starts to grow a plant when they begin to work. With the accumulation of balanced working time, users gain seeds. The need for competence can be addressed by points (seeds), which could provide granular feedback that is directly connected to the actions of the user. The growth of the plants visually indicates the user’s progress over time, thereby providing sustained feedback. The need for social relatedness can be evoked by emphasizing the importance of the user’s actions for teammates. A mutual goal can be set for a company or a project group for which they will nurture a planet together, so that the user can foster social relatedness at home.

(3) Take proper breaks to nurture the plant.

At a pre-determined break time, friendly creatures will come to remind users gently to take a break. If the users choose to stop working, the creatures will pollinate the plant to make it prosperous. In this way, users can gain seeds and maintain the balance of nature, which also meets the need for autonomy in terms of psychological need satisfaction.  This pollination story can help users experience their own activities as significant and volitionally captivating, regardless of whether decisions are truly accessible.

(4) Finish your work day.

At the end of the day, the plant will lead the users with a quick reflection with several questions, followed by a reminder of their evening plan. A new plant grows on the personal planet that marks the users’ work-life balance achievement.  In this system, a narrative frame is created in which the user is given a meaningful role. Together with colleagues, a feeling of collaboration can be evoked by underlining the significance of the users' activities for the group’s performance. A shared objective, which can be passed on inside a significant story, can likewise cultivate encounters of social relatedness.

(5) Reward mechanisms

Users will be rewarded with seeds when they tick off tasks on the to-do-list and take proper breaks. The seeds can be used to exchange for vouchers to spend in the real world to foster well-being: local yoga clubs, meditation classes, gym membership, seasonal flowers, etc. Essentially, it is the physical rewarding of the gamified elements that can evoke feelings of competence, as this directly communicates the success of a user’s actions.

Moreover, new plants will be unlocked with the time accumulation of the balanced life. It is well known that all humans endeavor to feel skilled when purposely impacting the environment they cooperate with. Thus, unlocking new plants and nurturing a richer planet create feelings of achievement and success while interacting with the environment.

We have validated our idea by showing the prototypes to our interviewees and had them answer a questionnaire afterward. We did this twice and received valuable feedback to improve our service. In the first validation, only forty percent of the interviewees were interested in this designed service and found it useful. We received feedback to improve the logic of the reward in our service and to add some background sounds during work. Eventually, 70% of our interviewees assessed the service as motivating and non-distracting.