Cherie Lacey, Alex Beattie and Catherine Caudwell: Wellness Capitalism and the Design of the Perfect User

Suggested citation: Cherie Lacey, Alex Beattie and Catherine Caudwell, Wellness Capitalism and the Design of the Perfect User. Interface Critique 3 (2021), pp. 127–150.

DOI: 10.11588/ic.2021.3.81323. 

This article is released under a
Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).

Dr Cherie Lacey is a lecturer in Media and Communication at Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. Her research explores the ways in which interface design mediates relationships and shapes subjectivity. Cherie has published in the areas of data privacy and ethics, dark patterns, digital wellbeing, and user subjectivity.

Alex Beattie is a Research Fellow at the Center for Science in Society, at Victoria University of Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand. He researches science communication, interface design and ethics, digital wellbeing and disconnecting from the internet. Alex has published in Convergence and is a contributing author of Making Time for Digital Lives: Beyond Chronotopia and Reckoning with Social Media: Disconnection in the Age of the Techlash (both Rowman & Littlefield).

Catherine Caudwell (PhD) is a lecturer in User Experience Design at the School of Design, Victoria University of Wellington. Catherine’s research takes a qualitative and interdisciplinary approach to exploring how relationships with emerging technologies are created, reinforced, and reimagined through the nexus of design, marketing, media, and public adoption.