Design for Wellbeing

An Applied Approach

Ann Petermans, Rebecca Cain, Ann Petermans, Rebecca Cain

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351355582
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business generale
• Index: Business

Design for Wellbeing charts the development and application of design research to improve the personal and societal 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.

Part I starts by conceptualising wellbeing and takes an in-depth look at the rise of the design for wellbeing movement. Part II then goes on to demonstrate design for wellbeing in practice through a broad range of domains from products and environments to services. Among others, we see emerging trends in the design of interiors and urban spaces to support wellbeing, designing to enable and support connectedness and social interaction, and designing for behaviour change to tackle unhealthy eating behaviour in children. Significantly, the body of work on subjective wellbeing, design for happiness, is increasing, and several case studies are provided on this, demonstrating how design can contribute to support the wellbeing of people. Part III provides practical guidance for designing for wellbeing through a range of examples of tools, methods and approaches, which are highly user-centric, participatory, critical and speculative. Finally, the book concludes in Part IV with a look at future challenges for design for wellbeing.

This book provides students, researchers and practitioners with a detailed assessment of design for wellbeing, taking a distinctive global approach to design practice and theory in context. Design for Wellbeing concerns designers and organisations but also defines its broader contribution to society, culture and economy.

Part I

The rise of design for wellbeing

1 Setting the scene for design for subjective wellbeing

Ann Petermans and Rebecca Cain

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.

Objective wellbeing

Objective wellbeing (OWB) is the degree to which external constraints (that is, conditions that are external to an individual) for having a high quality of life are met (Constanza et al., 2007). Researchers of OWB often focus on the development and testing of lists of parameters such as social, economic, cultural and health indicators that are meaningful in this respect. Such data can be collected without subjective evaluations being made ...