FW-HTF-RL: Improving the Mental Well-being and Productivity of the Software Development Workforce of Tomorrow

Today, software teams and organizations can create software of a complexity and scale that is unprecedented. Moreover, they can do so more effectively and more efficiently than ever before. While there are many contributing factors, the advances in the capabilities of the tools that software developers use have been a principal enabler, particularly in terms of collaborating in large teams across distances and time zones. On the one hand, this represents a major human-technology partnership success. However, these tools may have negative consequences for worker well-being when their design focuses on software engineering outcomes without considering how the tools affect developers' work practices and interactions with teammates. Badly designed tools can reduce learning, self-expression, and communication with others; this may in turn negatively impact developers' mental well-being and the long term success of the organization. This project creates the foundations for a new kind of human-technology partnership in highly collaborative, tool-intensive work environments; a partnership in which workers' mental well-being is considered in the design of tools and the practices they support. The goal is to demonstrate that, by making mental well-being a primary design concern next to productivity, it is possible to improve both worker mental well-being and work performance. The project consists of three parts. The first part combines observational studies of developers at work with interviews and surveys to assess the state of mental well-being among software developers in terms of the nature and prevalence of mental well-being issues, how these issues impact their own and their team's work, and the effectiveness of any existing coping strategies they may use. To address the issues identified in the first part, the second part involves theory development, industry panels, and research workshops to articulate principles for tool design and associated best practices that support productivity while promoting mental well-being. The third part builds on these principles and practices to design novel tools and assess those tools through laboratory experiments and field trials at organizational partners. Leveraging the lens of self-determination theory across all three thrusts, the results from the project can: (1) contribute to and effect discussions around mental well-being in software development, especially in terms of raising awareness, setting corporate policy, and workforce training, (2) shape further software development tools beyond the ones the project prototypes, and (3) empower instructors to use online resource the project develops to bring the lessons learned to students who will form the future software workforce and face challenges to their mental well-being. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.