Design for Happiness Deck

The ability to “design for happiness” is a deeply satisfying skill that can be used in all life domains. Whether you are a chef, an architect, a bartender, a nurse, or an office manager, your job constantly presents you with design challenges that demand ingenuity and creativity. More than that, you make design decisions in every other life domain — when you cook, choose a school for your children, reorganize your desk, or plan a holiday. You are the designer of your life. To design for happiness sounds like a grand undertaking. Some might even say an overly ambitious one – but we disagree. We believe that explicitly focusing on happiness is an indispensable part of human-focused design and, ultimately, a reliable predictor of a design’s success. The Design for Happiness Deck breaks down the seemingly overwhelming phenomenon of happiness into 72 components. Each of them offers you a direct doorway to happiness in your design projects. 72 ingredients of happiness This box includes three sets of 24 cards. Each set represents an essential ingredient of happiness: • 24 pleasures Happiness from enjoying the moment. All the positive emotions we experience in our everyday lives make a direct contribution to our happiness. • 24 personal goals Happiness from achieving goals. We have a natural tendency towards reaching our potential, and we do so by committing to our life goals. These goals differ between people and may change over time, but having (and working towards) them is a profound source of happiness. • 24 characters strengths Happiness from being virtuous. Being a good person and behaving honourably can profoundly contribute to the wellbeing of others as well as of our own. Virtuous behaviour is an expression of our personal character strengths. With these 72 ingredients, you can challenge the wellbeing prospects of your future designs. You can use them to explore how to add some happiness to projects for clients as well as to your life or to the lives of your friends, family, and colleagues. How to use this card deck? We leave it to you to decide when and how to use the cards — to start a conversation, inform your research, trigger new ideas, justify your design decisions, or simply inspire your team. To get you started, here are five examples: Positive conversations Spread out the 24 positive emotions on the table. Step 1: Ask each person to pick one emotion that they often experience (at work, in the family, in the team, etc.). Share stories of when you have experienced these emotions. Step 2: Ask each person to pick one emotion that they would like to experience more often. In the group, share examples of when you have experienced these emotions and come up with ideas on how these moments can be supported. What can you change to introduce and foster these positive emotions? Celebrating personal strengths Spread out the 24 character strengths on the table. Pick one person. The others make a top four character strengths for this person. Explain to the person why she/he has this strengths by using examples of when the person did something good. Repeat for all people in the group. Goal of the month Spread out the 24 goal cards on the table. Each person picks one goal that she/he wants to commit to in the coming four weeks. Take the card and place it in a visible place (on the fridge, desk, etc.). Explore how you can bring that goal into your daily activities. After the four weeks have passed, share experiences. Designing Happiness When you are working on a design (a product, a service, an app, a building, etc.), you can use the cards to find a happiness vision. For example, pick five cards that represent key desirable ingredients of happiness for your design project. They might be already present and should be enhanced or they are still lacking and first need to be established. Share the cards with your team and keep them in sight during the project. Or you can use the cards as a source of creativity. For example, when you are creating ideas, pick one random card and challenge your team to come up with ideas that stimulates this happiness ingredient. Empathy tool When working with stakeholders (clients, consumers, etc.), you can use the cards to empathize with them. For example, ask them to pick some cards that best represent them, or cards that they miss in a certain situation. Or ask them to pick those cards that they would like you to work with. Their selection is a good conversation starter. The Design for Happiness Deck was created by researchers at the Delft Institute of Positive Design. We based the deck's structure on the Positive Design framework by Desmet and Pohlmeyer (2013, 2017). The set was inspired by the ‘positive emotion cards’ originally developed by Jay Yoon. Concept and content Anna Pohlmeyer and Pieter Desmet - TU Delft Jay Yoon - Cornell University Design and production Christiaan Kieft and Simon Jimenez - Seven Innovation As design researchers at the Delft Institute of Positive Design (TU Delft), we seek to advance our understanding of the ways products and services can be designed to foster human happiness. We develop tools that designers and organisations can use to tap into the vast potential of lasting wellbeing. On our website, you will find more tools, a rich library of open-access research and specific usage guidelines to design for positive emotional granularity. See www.diopd.org. Positive Design References • Desmet, P.M.A., & Pohlmeyer, A.E. (2013). Positive design: An introduction to design for subjective well-being. International Journal of Design, 7(3), 5-19. • Pohlmeyer, A.E. & Desmet, P.M.A. (2017). From good to the greater good. In J. Chapman (Ed.) The Routledge handbook of sustainable product design (pp. 469-486). London: Routledge. Positive Emotions Pieter Desmet developed the typology of positive emotions (the typology includes 25 emotions; for the sake of balance, ‘respect’ is not included in this Design for Happiness Deck). Jay Yoon developed the original positive emotion granularity cards. Card texts were based on descriptions formulated by Desmet (2012) and Yoon (2018). References • Desmet, P.M.A. (2012). Faces of product pleasure: 25 Positive emotions in human-product interactions. International Journal of Design, 6(2), 1-29. • Yoon, J., Desmet, P.M.A., & Pohlmeyer, A.E. (2013). Embodied typology of positive emotions: The development of a tool to facilitate emotional granularity in design. In: proceedings of the 5th IASDR International Congress, Tokyo, Japan (pp. 1195–1206). • Yoon, J. (2018). Escaping the emotional blur: Design tools for facilitating positive emotional granularity. PhD thesis. Delft University of Technology. Human Goals Martin Ford and Charles Nichols developed the typology of 24 human goals. Card texts were based on descriptions formulated by Ford (1992). References • Ford, M.E., & Nichols, C.W. (1987). A taxonomy of human goals and some possible applications. In M.E. Ford & D.H. Ford (Eds.), Humans as self-constructing systems: Putting the framework to work (pp. 289-312). Hillsdale: Erlbaum. • Ford, M.E. (1992). Motivating humans: Goals, emotions, and personal agency beliefs. Newbury Park: Sage Publications. Character Strengths Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman developed the typology of 24 character strengths. Card texts were based on descriptions formulated by Peterson & Seligman (2004) and Park, Peterson, & Seligman (2006). References • Peterson, C., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2004). Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • Park, N., Peterson, C., & Seligman, M.E.P. (2006). Character strengths in fifty-four nations and the fifty US states. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 1(3), 118-129. Share this card set Download a free version of this card set at www.diopd.org. Share your insights We would love to hear about and learn from your experiences. Please let us know about your experiences using the cards in your design projects, research and explorations via [email protected]. Your questions and feedback will help us improve future versions of the deck and create new tools to design for happiness. Terms of use The Design for Happiness Deck is published under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Creative Commons licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This means that you are free to share the card set for non-commercial purposes as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and do not modify the original material. For licence details, see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Reference In communication, please refer to this publication as follows: Delft Institute of Positive Design (2017). Design for Happiness Deck. Delft, Delft University of Technology. ISBN: 978-94-92516-86-2