Introduction


It has been postulated that humans have an innate drive to make meaning of everyday experiences and to form a coherent view of the world around them. In the field of work design, occupational health psychologists have addressed this topic with a focus on job crafting, person-job fit, and basic needs satisfaction. In the field of life design, vocational psychologists have researched this topic with a focus on idiosyncratic processes of self-construction and identity narratives within people's vocational development.





Purpose


We are developing a digital platform labelled 'Meaning@Work' to support individuals in crafting meaningful work and careers. Hereby we also aim to combine approaches from occupational psychology (such as 'job crafting') with approaches from psychological research on career development (such as the 'career construction interview').





Method


On the digital platform 'Meaning@Work', participants write short stories about themselves. This is self-explanatory and done step by step. At the end, the stories are used to create an 'identity card' with a summary of dispositions, motives and life themes, as well as a recommendation to oneself on how to use this insight to create more meaning in one's career and everyday working live. We also integrate generative artificial intelligence to offer participants creative inspiration when writing and interpreting the stories. Finally, we evaluate both the use and acceptance of the process and its effect on the experience of meaning.





Result


The prototype of the platform and results from the usability testing will be available by the time of the conference and presented to the audience.





Conclusions


This combination of concepts and methods will have an impact on both fields of work and life design research, expanding our repertoire and ways of studying the concept of meaning and meaning-making at work.