The Practical Side to Wellbeing in AI
An Interview with Iliana Grosse-Buening
Often when we talk about our values we have a tendency to put on the horse-blinders and focus in on only one at a time.
However, one of the beautiful intricacies of our values is how they interact with each other.
A singular value does not happen in a vacuum, instead it is surrounded by supporting, and sometimes even conflicting, values. How we embody one value can be heavily influenced by the other values we hold, a factor that when considered can open up new horizons.
And Iliana Grosse-Buening’s work in wellbeing and impact gives us a perfect example of how values can interact with each other to create a sum that brings about an even richer depth to product development than the individual parts could ever muster.
TL;DR - Watch the interview with Iliana Grosse-Buening here
The following is one-part summary of Iliana’s interview, one-part my reflections on the conversation. To listen to the full discussion, check out the recording here.
Who is Iliana Grosse-Buening?
In her own words, Iliana is an entrepreneur, author, adjunct professor and speaker passionate about empowering individuals and organizations to thrive in the age of AI.
With over a decade of experience working across multinationals, NGOs, and startups in regions like Kenya, China, the UK, Australia, and Germany, she brings a global perspective to the ever-evolving intersection of technology and wellbeing. Through her work, she has reached thousands of individuals—whether through workshops, conferences, or her podcast, "The Quiet Living Room," with episodes reaching up to 70k downloads.
She is the founder of the Quiet Social Club and co-founder of "Future Meets YOU!", where she prepares young people for an AI-driven world by blending creativity with digital balance and essential future skills, such as self-leadership and interpersonal communication.
What is Iliana’s driving value?
Although Iliana’s work has centered around wellbeing, you may be surprised to hear that it’s not actually her driving value. Instead, wellbeing is a manifestation of a deeper core value she holds: impact.
When asked about the mission behind her work in digital wellbeing, Iliana explains that her driver is her desire to translate the science behind the abstract ideas into impactful tools and techniques. It’s one thing to talk about wellbeing, it’s another to find practical solutions that anyone can adopt into their daily lives.
Taking her value of impact to heart and applying it to the increasingly complex world of wellbeing, Iliana has been dedicating herself to answering the question of how do we live, work, and come together better in a digital world powered by AI.
What does Iliana’s value look like in action?
When it comes to driving impact, Iliana has a simply elegant approach she follows for breaking down abstract values into practical tools:
Define
Contextualize
Measure
It doesn’t matter if you are breaking down an abstract value for a product, company culture, or even for yourself, the steps for translating that value into something practical looks the same. To bring Iliana’s process to life, let’s take the value of digital wellbeing and run it through the steps…
Define
Defining the value
As a quick Google search or ChatGPT prompt will easily tell you, there is no shortage of definitions for digital wellbeing. How ever helpful these initial definitions may be in getting your thinking started, it’s important to remember that these are fundamentally basic understandings. We can start with the basics, but in order to fully reach the depth of impact we strive for, we need to push our thinking and contextualize our definition.
Through almost a decade’s worth of work, Iliana has honed in her definition of digital wellbeing as a subjective experience in which we are searching for the optimal balance between the benefits and drawbacks of our connected lives.
She stresses that digital wellbeing is not a one time state of being, but instead a dynamic and subjective journey that can be aided (or hindered) by the digital tools we engage with on a daily basis. A journey which has only increased in its urgency since the onset of AI adoption in the general public.
Contextualize
Break down the value into the layers of your context
Dealing with something that is subjective by nature, it is essential to breakdown digital wellbeing into the different contextual layers. As Iliana stresses, we have to move beyond just the individual layer and look into the organizational layer of digital wellbeing as well.
On the individual layer, digital wellbeing can be as simple as being engaged and not distracted. Amid the cacophony of notifications, are we as individuals able to focus on conversations in real time and be actively engaged in our teams?
On the organizational layer, looking at the subject of nature of wellbeing makes it is obvious that there is no one size fits all. This means that we have to find the right balance between individualization and standardization, as well as incorporate digital wellbeing into company culture and initiatives.
Measure
Establish the metrics of success for your value
What we measure is a direct reflection of what we care about. However, when it comes to developing technical solutions for digital wellbeing, we have a tendency to focus on short terms numbers rather than overarching goals. For example, we can measure engagement time on a mental health app, but that does not necessarily mean we are measuring actual mental health.
In order to truly measure digital wellbeing, we need to be asking ourselves if our metrics are complete and holistic. We need to ensure that what we are measuring is a good proxy for our wellbeing goals, ones that correlate directly to our sense of balanced connectivity. To do this, Iliana stresses to ask yourself if the metrics you’ve outlined can be sustainable in the long-term, as well as to involve a series of different stakeholders in the ideation and deployment of the metrics.
How can you bring Iliana’s value to life in your own work?
So, let’s say you go through the process of defining, contextualizing, and measuring your value - what happens next? You have your objectives clearly designed now, but how do you ensure you reach them? According to Iliana, this is exactly when you need to introduce a framework for action.
And in the context of digital wellbeing, Iliana immediately points us towards the Wellbeing Compass, a framework developed by Alina Kukarina and herself that is soon to be published in Springer Nature’s “AI Ethics in Practice” upcoming volume initiated by Dr Christian Hugo Hoffman.
The Wellbeing Compass was designed for anyone who is looking to operationalize wellbeing and AI at the core of their business. Through a series of questions and guidelines, the framework maps onto your existing processes by addressing every stage from ideation to launch in product development. The compass is comprised of four principles: Proactive, Purpose Driven, Human-Centric, and Adaptive. These principles are meant to compliment your other business metrics and can be activated at any point of the product development lifecycle.
Frameworks like the Wellbeing Compass is just one of many examples of tools that you can use to translate your defined, contextualized, and measured value into action. Whether you are operationalizing wellbeing or another value, your ability to drive impact rests on the tools and metrics you are using to bring these values to life.
Iliana Grosse-Buening’s Definition of Good Tech
“Really good tech actually empowers the people who are creating the technology to feel connected to a sense of wellbeing and to the positive impact that they're having on people's lives. It’s when the person who is designing the technology can also experience the benefits they are helping bring out in this world.”
P.S. If you’re using the Values Canvas methodology, Iliana’s measured approach to AI aligns perfectly with the Motivate element *hint hint*.
Say hello to the human
Connect with Iliana on LinkedIn, check out her work at Quiet Social Club, or read more about the Future Meets YOU!
