Wellbeing: A hot topic

‘Wellbeing’ is a major, if not the ultimate goal, for every human being. Therefore, it is unsurprising that many institutions, governments and organisations worldwide are continuing to pay more attention to this important subject. There are four reasons why we are demanding more attention for ‘wellbeing’:

First, there is a growing societal need to focus on the wellbeing of people. There is a growing interest for people to pay the necessary time, effort and attention to the fulfilment of immaterial aspects in life, their re-appreciation of the search for and fulfilment of personal values, a good work–life balance, a healthy life, etc. However, although people increasingly have the possibilities and the willingness to work on their wellbeing, research (Easterlin, 1974; Veenhoven, 1993) shows that the average level of wellbeing remains stationary; a phenomenon known as the ‘Easterlin Paradox’ (De Tella & MacCulloch, 2008).

Second, from an economic point of view, paying attention to wellbeing is highly relevant, as happy people are more successful in many domains of life, and these successes are at least in part due to their happiness, according to Lyubomirsky et al. (2005a). Happy people are more social, altruistic and active, they like themselves more as well as liking others more and they have healthy bodies and immune systems as well as better conflict resolution skills. In addition, happiness seems to promote people’s capacity for constructive and creative thinking (Desmet & Hassenzahl, 2012). A meta-analysis has demonstrated that being and feeling happy not only makes people feel better, more energetic and physically healthier, leading to a longer life expectancy, but happy people are also more creative and open-minded, have better relationships and are more productive in their jobs (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005b; Veenhoven, 2011). Longitudinal data indeed supports the proposition that happiness leads to success rather than vice versa (with mean effect sizes of .21 for the happiness, satisfying relationship link; .24 for the happiness, satisfying work link; and .18 for the happiness, health/longevity link) (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005b). Thus, investing in increased happiness not only leads to individuals feeling better, but also has social and public health benefits that are relevant for society as a whole (Desmet & Hassenzahl, 2012). Paying attention to wellbeing is thus highly relevant and also very much needed to enable our industries and economies to face all kinds of challenges that lie ahead of us, today and tomorrow, including, for example, ageing well, working and living well in appealing environments, and in reflecting about mobility and mental health. In this book, several of these issues and challenges will be discussed in depth.

Third, given these perspectives, it is not surprising that happiness has also become an issue on the political agenda. In 2011, the General Assembly of the United Nations accepted a resolution wherein they appealed to UN member states to undertake steps to give more attention to the pursuit of happiness of their citizens when determining how to achieve and measure social and economic development in their country (UN, 2011). In this respect, Bhutan is often a reference country: its ‘Gross National Happiness Index’ states that sustainable development should take a holistic view towards progress and should give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing and happiness. Similarly, in 2011 the OECD launched the OECD’s ‘Better Life Initiative’, a pioneering project which aims to measure subjective wellbeing as an important indicator of society’s progress (OECD, 2013). In line with this interest, the European Union also established an explicit aim to assess their citizens’ wellbeing and design policies that help promote it in the future years (Eurobarometer, 2011).

In 2013, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon pointed again to the importance of attention for people’s wellbeing and happiness. In his Note to the General Assembly (2013, p. 3) he indicated that ‘the creation of an enabling environment for improving people’s wellbeing is a development goal in itself’ and he also stated that ‘the time is ripe for our measurement system [i.e., GDP] to shift emphasis from measuring economic production to measuring people’s wellbeing’. Over the last five years, his call for action has been picked up by several very diverse institutions, governments and organisations all over the globe, including the UN. In 2015, UN countries adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that were put forward. These goals concern a call for action to all countries to stimulate prosperity while safeguarding the protection of the planet (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1  Sustainable Development Goals.

Source: United Nations, 2015.

As Figure 1.1 shows, ensuring good health and promoting the wellbeing of people is 1 of these 17 SDGs, demonstrating the timeliness, relevance and importance of the topic today.

Fourth, it is clear that many designed objects and environments are silent companions in our daily lives. We are surrounded by them in almost everything we do and we interact with them, intentionally and unintentionally. In this respect, studying the potential of design and environments to enable people to work on their happiness holds great promise for creating a better world.

Starting from these accumulating practices and growing insights, it is not surprising that in recent years, subjective wellbeing has also emerged internationally as an important research topic. To quote Harvard psychologist Dan Gilbert (2012): ‘Papers on happiness are published in Science, people who study happiness win Nobel prizes, and governments all over the world are rushing to figure out how to measure and increase the happiness of their citizens.’

This book aims to chart the development and application of design research to improve the subjective wellbeing and happiness of people. It draws together contributions from internationally leading academics and designers to demonstrate the latest thinking and research on the design of products, technologies, environments, services and experiences for wellbeing. Throughout the book, the importance of design for health is acknowledged, but it is clear that the aim of this book is to approach and explore the concept of subjective wellbeing and happiness more generally.

State-of-the-art: Researching subjective wellbeing and design

To date, researchers from diverse disciplines have tried to point to the essence of wellbeing and/or happiness. Philosophers, theorists and researchers from disciplines such as psychology, economics and neurosciences are interested in happiness. In the last few years, researchers from various design disciplines have also begun to investigate whether their discipline can contribute to the happiness of people – and, if so, what this contribution can be and/or how it can be set up or produced. However, to date, a consensus on the conceptualisation of wellbeing and happiness has not been reached, neither in design disciplines (Petermans & Pohlmeyer, 2014; Petermans & Nuyts, 2016), nor in other disciplines that focus on wellbeing and happiness (Lee et al., 2011; Desmet & Pohlmeyer, 2013).

Where researchers do agree, first, is that happiness is determined for a large part by genetics, life circumstances and intentional activities (Lyubomirsky et al., 2005a; Lyubomirsky, 2007). The fact that people can influence their happiness by focusing on the set-up of intentional activities creates tremendous opportunities for design. Throughout this book, and in particular in Part II, the contributing authors demonstrate the added value of design for wellbeing in different domains of practice. A second point of agreement among various researchers is that happiness and wellbeing have an objective and subjective component (Veenhoven et al., 2014; Petermans & Pohlmeyer, 2014).

As a consequence of these developments, researchers in academia often use the terms ‘(subjective) wellbeing’ (SWB) and ‘happiness’ interchangeably (Lyubomirsky, 2007) in the popular press, daily discussions and scientific literature (Veenhoven, 2011; Desmet & Hassenzahl, 2012). In this book, we follow suit. In this respect, Chapter 2 of the book is key, as this chapter makes a detailed exploration of the rise of design for wellbeing, specifying the concepts of wellbeing, subjective wellbeing and human flourishing. In this way, a background to the growth of the area is provided.

Indeed, the way in which SWB is often connoted is close to the way in which most people interpret ‘happiness’ in its widest sense, that is, happiness as an overarching term for ‘all that is good’ (Veenhoven, 2011, p. 2). In addition, different researchers have been developing various models and strategies to increase SWB, particularly in the discipline of positive psychology (e.g., see the works of Lyubomirsky et al., 2005a; Lyubomirsky, 2007; Seligman, 2011). However, a clear consensus is still lacking.

Next, it is also recognised that ‘researchers do not yet fully understand the causal role of the mediating factors that lead to improved wellbeing’ (Nelson et al., 2015, p. 256). Nelson and Lyubomirsky (2014) point to the relevance and importance of future research to investigate the ‘underlying mechanisms that lead positive activities to successfully improve wellbeing – that is, the “why” question’ (p. 5). Such insights can facilitate creating or designing ‘tools’ and/or ‘strategies’ to enable people to develop their happiness. Part II of this book builds on this request for future research by providing examples of tools, methods and approaches that can be used by designers and researchers when designing for wellbeing.

In what follows, we elaborate further on ‘objective’ and ‘subjective wellbeing’, as these can be considered as large classification labels which provide a particular lens to look at various other approaches regarding wellbeing and happiness.

Design for subjective wellbeing

Taking into account the state-of-the-art, it is intriguing to consider designed products, environments and services not only as a ‘feature’ of our circumstances, but also as a ‘platform’ where or with which people can set up intentional activities that contribute to their happiness (Petermans & Pohlmeyer, 2014). This opens up exciting opportunities for the design community.

From around 2012/2013 onwards, attention for design for wellbeing has grown in a diverse range of design disciplines, ranging from engineering design (Mackrill et al., 2014), industrial design (Desmet & Hassenzahl, 2012; Ozkaramanli & Desmet, 2012; Desmet & Pohlmeyer, 2013), interaction design (Hassenzahl et al., 2013; Karapanos et al., 2016; Diefenbach et al., 2017), … to architecture and interior architecture (Payne et al., 2014; Vuong et al., 2012; Petermans & Pohlmeyer, 2014; Potter et al. 2018; Stevens, 2018). Particularly revealing about this interest and focus is, first, that considerations regarding what design for subjective wellbeing could be, and how designers can/could be stimulated to design for subjective wellbeing, are grounded in existing literature and insights, which are present or have come forth in studies performed in adjacent disciplines (e.g., see Jimenez et al., 2015), such as for instance psychology, philosophy, social sciences and humanities (instead of focusing on subjective wellbeing while relying [only] on a kind of gut feeling or intuition) (Stevens, 2018).

Second, new to design for subjective wellbeing as it is set up today is the call for an explicit focus on integrating design for wellbeing considerations early in the design process. It can thus be stated that research on wellbeing in design sciences can be considered pioneering work. This is supported by the fact that design conferences are only starting to set up first ‘tracks’ that specifically focus on ‘wellbeing and happiness’ (e.g., see ‘Design and Emotion 2016’ in The Netherlands (track Subjective Wellbeing and Happiness and Architecture), ‘DRS 2016’ in the UK (track Design for Health, Wellbeing and Happiness), ‘DRS 2018’ in Ireland (track Design Research for Wellbeing, Health and Happiness). The Design Research Society has also developed the Special Interest Group on ‘Design for Wellbeing, Happiness and Health’ due to a growing community of researchers in this area. These initiatives indicate that academic researchers are eager to connect and exchange knowledge and experiences on this topic. It is our hope that this book can assist in effectively organising and inspiring designers, researchers and practitioners who are active in this emerging field of knowledge.

Editing this book has enabled the involved authors to discuss various research projects that reflect on the question of how design (e.g., products, environments, services) can contribute to the wellbeing of people. Indeed, a current key question in different design disciplines is how people experience designed products, environments or services (e.g., see Petermans et al., 2013; Hassenzahl et al., 2013; Desmet & Pohlmeyer, 2013). If this question is taken one step further, aiming to link design research to research on wellbeing, one can ask: can design empower people to flourish in the environments which they occupy, and in which they live, work and/or play?

This goes beyond most current common discussions in design disciplines. Taking into account current knowledge on subjective wellbeing and happiness, it is the editors’ belief that design and designers can play a very important role in this respect. In order to accommodate and answer questions on design for subjective wellbeing that are present both in design academia and design practice, this book has been set up to be of interest to different target audiences: students, teachers, researchers, but certainly also practitioners. Leading academics contributed to each of the different parts of the book, demonstrating the latest thinking and research on the design of products, environments and services for subjective wellbeing. Next to elaborating about research and theory, every contributing author has been asked explicitly to end their chapter with concrete guidelines, showcasing ‘how to’ translate the discussed insights into design practice.

Organisation of the book

This book brings together researchers from a diversity of disciplines who have expertise in subjective wellbeing and happiness for different user groups (e.g., older people, designers, policy-makers), but with a particular focus on products, environments and services: psychologists, social scientists, gerontologists, architects, interior architects, industrial designers, product designers, interaction designers, engineering designers and service designers. By contributing to this book, their mutual interests can converge and knowledge from a diverse range of disciplines can be exchanged.

The book is organised into four parts.

The first chapter of Part I, this chapter, sketches the background to the growth of design for subjective wellbeing. Chapter 2, a contribution from Ruth Stevens, Ann Petermans, Jan Vanrie, Anna Pohlmeyer and Rebecca Cain, then discusses the semantics of wellbeing, happiness and flourishing, and takes an in-depth look at the rise of the design for wellbeing movement.

Part II then goes on to demonstrate design for subjective wellbeing in practice, through providing a broad range of domains ranging from products to environments and services where design for subjective wellbeing has been applied.

In Chapter 3, Cathy Treadaway explores how design can be used to support the wellbeing of people living with dementia. It describes international design research that is informing the development of new products and services for dementia care and some of the particular challenges that designers face when undertaking applied design research to support the subjective wellbeing of people living with dementia. In Chapter 4, a contribution from Ann Petermans, Jan Vanrie, An-Sofie Smetcoren, Gitte Harzé and Jo Broekx, design for wellbeing in architecture and interior architecture is explored. The chapter demonstrates how research by design in a design studio exercise can help to crystallise insights and point to various possibilities that architecture and interior architecture can offer regarding the topic of ‘lifelong living without care’. Next, in Chapter 5, Tiiu Poldma elaborates about social connectedness, social interaction and the design of interior environments. The chapter examines in particular how social interaction frames wellbeing from the perspective of people’s experiences and how social connectedness occurs within public interior spaces. Chapter 6, developed by Luke Harmer, Rebecca Cain and Artur Mausbach, then goes on explore how social interaction within a mobility context can contribute to wellbeing. Through exploratory studies and workshops into future mobility, they explore the concept of ‘joyful journeys’ as moments which can be choreographed into pleasurable activities. Chapter 7 concludes Part II, with a contribution from Geke Ludden and Sander Hermsen. Their chapter elaborates about healthy eating and behaviour change, explaining why many efforts that aim to stimulate healthy eating have limited or even adverse effects on changing people’s eating behaviour. They do so by adopting four views that are relevant to design. For each view, they discuss relevant literature and the role that design has played and could play when adopting that particular view. It is clear that, in the end, designing for healthy eating has great potential to contribute to people’s subjective wellbeing. It is evident that the contributions that make up Part II do not present an exhaustive overview of design for subjective wellbeing in practice; on the contrary, Part II provides a ‘first impression’ of the broad scale of possible ‘applications’ of design for wellbeing in different domains. It would be wonderful to collect many more examples of design for wellbeing in practice in the near future.

Next, Part III discusses tools, methods and approaches which can be used by designers and researchers in design for wellbeing. In Chapter 8, Emmanuel Tsekleves elaborates on co-design and participatory methods and approaches for wellbeing. Following an introduction to the theory, an overview of the main areas where participatory and co-design approaches are being applied in relation to wellbeing is provided. The chapter also presents two case studies where such approaches are employed for enhancing the wellbeing of people living with dementia and Parkinson’s disease. In Chapter 9, Emily Corrigan-Doyle and Carolina Escobar-Tello discuss creative methods for sustainable design for happiness and wellbeing. They elaborate about the Design for Happiness framework (DfH) and the Designing for Home Happiness framework (DfHH) as applicable, specific, creative methods to improve individuals’ and ultimately society’s happiness and wellbeing. They also give suggestions on how these methods might be implemented in future scenarios, and they give guidelines for their use. Chapter 10, developed by Ruth Stevens and Pieter Desmet, discusses ‘Building Storey/ies’: a scenario-based card game to architecturally design for human flourishing. Architectural designers can use this card game together with relevant stakeholders when they are designing for human flourishing. The chapter first discusses the development of the card game, then introduces the game components and scenario, and then reports on a workshop in which the game was tested. In Chapter 11, Holger Klapperich, Matthias Laschke, Marc Hassenzahl, Melanie Becker, Diana Cürlis, Thorsten Frackenpohl, Henning Köhler, Kai Ludwigs and Marius Tippkämper elaborate about a practice-oriented approach to begin to bridge the gap between abstract experiential design objectives and specific products and interaction. After introducing a theoretical understanding of wellbeing-driven design and showing how elements of social practice theory can inspire a set of practical design-supporting activities, a case study is discussed to highlight the challenges and opportunities of the suggested approach. Part III ends with Chapter 12, a contribution from Deger Ozkaramanli. She discusses dilemma-thinking as a means to enhance criticality in design for wellbeing. Critical design approaches require a distinct mindset and skills; in her chapter, she takes a step towards uncovering what that critical mindset can be and the role of dilemmas in supporting it.

The book concludes with Part IV with a look at future challenges facing society in terms of wellbeing, suggesting where and how design and design research can try to have a positive impact in this respect. In Chapter 13, Sarah Kettley and Rachel Lucas propose a picture of design in mental health. They outline the intersections of design research with mental health in the UK and Europe and consider challenges and future directions for designers working with the mental health service sector. A review of the literature results in their pinpointing three key challenges. Chapter 14, a contribution by An-Sofie Smetcoren, Liesbeth De Donder and Dominique Verté, discusses housing in later life. The chapter particularly focuses on housing and neighbourhood design and its relation to the (objective and subjective) wellbeing of older people. Based on a review of literature and results from a concrete research project in Brussels, Belgium, the authors set out important design principles for the future and formulate challenges relating to the home environment and wellbeing of older people. In Chapter 15, Leandro Tonetto discusses an international perspective on design for wellbeing. This contribution indicates that what seems to differentiate the scientific production within design for wellbeing from continent to continent is the underlying theoretical foundations and the social issues addressed by these studies. Part IV concludes with Chapter 16, a reflection by Pieter Desmet, wherein he discusses future agendas in design for wellbeing research and practice.

We hope that, together, these chapters will broaden the view of readers interested in design for wellbeing. With this book, we do not pretend to be able to present an exhaustive list of research projects and/or domains in design focusing on design for wellbeing. We hope that the book can be a starting point to boost research and collaboration for researchers as well as practitioners who focus on design and wellbeing, and that it can be an inspiration and foundation for further work that will help both to inspire others and to advance the body of knowledge in this field. In this way, we hope to have been able to contribute to the exchange of knowledge and experience to stimulate discussions about how design and environment can contribute to the wellbeing of people.

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