Central to the present paper is the question of how designers can be supported to deliberately facilitate positive emotional experiences. Related to this, the paper provides an overview of the research on design for positive emotions, its issues, and opportunities for further investigations. The practical relevance of transcending the notion of generalised pleasure is discussed, highlighting the benefits of developing and applying a nuanced understanding of positive emotions. Overarching challenges and opportunities that underlie in stimulating such understanding are delineated along with the review of characteristics of positive emotions. Ethical issues of designing for positive emotions are reflected regarding its implications for well-being with suggestions to resolve them. Besides, the paper discusses emerging research directions, ranging from design tools to distinguish diverse positive emotions, the added value of exploring expressive interaction qualities of positive emotions, to advantages of involving tool users (e.g., designers and project stakeholders) in the development process.

Background: Taking care of products is a relevant approach to prolong products’ lifetimes and retain their desired level of performance, and is thus an important aspect of sustainable consumer behaviour. Although consumers have a general motivation to take care of their products, previous research has shown that they struggle to repair, maintain or treat their products carefully in daily life. Design has the potential to increase consumers’ product care activities, but designers need more knowledge and distinct strategies to evoke this product care behaviour with consumers. Methods: By the means of a multi-method approach—individual and group brainstorming sessions as well as an analysis of existing solutions—we created a large number of ideas on how to stimulate product care among consumers. Results: We were able to summarize these ideas in a clustering session into eight strategies and 24 sub-strategies that can foster product care through design. These eight strategies are: social connections, informing, enabling, appropriation, control, awareness, antecedents & consequences, and reflecting. The integration of the consumer perspective into strategies for product care extends currently known design strategies for repair and maintenance. To support designers in the implementation of these strategies, we developed a toolkit that can be used in the product development process of different product categories. Conclusions: This paper identifies product care strategies that have a distinct focus on the consumers’ perspective of sustainable behaviour and that can be stimulated through design. These rather psychologically-driven strategies thereby complement existing technology- and product-oriented design strategies. Furthermore, to facilitate implementation, a design toolkit has been developed that points to key requirements in practice.

SIGWELL is the Design Research Society’s Special Interest Group (SIG) focusing on Design for Wellbeing, Happiness and Health. The SIGWELL community has an interest in advancing knowledge, and the development and application of design research in the broadest sense to improve the wellbeing, happiness and personal and societal health of people.

In this paper, we introduce a framework that conceptualizes a multi-stage process through which technology can promote sustained wellbeing. Intentional wellbeing-enhancing activities form the centerpiece linking direct product interaction to, ultimately, wellbeing. The framework was developed following a bottom-up–top-down approach by integrating theoretical knowledge from positive psychology, behavioral science and human–computer interaction (HCI)/design with empirical insights. We outline (a) the framework, (b) its five main stages including their multidisciplinary theoretical foundations, (c) relations between these stages and (d) specific elements that further describe each stage. The paper illustrates how the framework was developed and elaborates three major areas of application: (design) research, design strategies and measurement approaches. With this work, we aim to provide actionable guidance for researchers and IT practitioners to understand and design technologies that foster sustained wellbeing.

This chapter introduces design for wellbeing by looking at its evolution through its eudaimonic and hedonic roots. Bentham, a philosopher whose work is situated at the turn of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century utilitarianism, in which contemporary views on hedonism are rooted, theorised that hedonic wellbeing is found in the quantity of pleasure experiences, as evidenced by his earlier statement. As one of the founders of positive psychology, he introduced the concept of 'authentic happiness' in 2003. In 2011, Seligman developed his theory of 'authentic happiness' further to a theory of wellbeing. In literature, 'happiness' is often used as a synonym for the term 'wellbeing', however in most literature on the historic evolution of hedonic wellbeing 'happiness' is defined as a synonym of 'pleasure'. In academic literature there is currently no consensus on an actual unambiguous definition of ‘wellbeing’, but there is discussion on the meanings of various terms and their interrelationship.

Research in positive psychology indicates that sustained well-being is more determined by our actions than by our possessions. Products' contribution to well-being may thus be grounded in their potential to support well-being-enhancing activities rather than in their material value. In a laddering study, we investigated how products shape a range of well-being determinants, including activities, and well-being outcomes. Following a hierarchical structure, seven product experience qualities, six motivations, and seven activities were empirically found to be linked to long-term well-being. We describe these ingredients for sustained well-being in further detail and provide actionable guidance on how to address them by means of design. As the majority of product-supported long-term well-being outcomes were mediated by activities, we propose activities as most promising starting point in design for sustained well-being.

Our SIG is managed by an international board (including the authors here, and in addition – Marc Hassenzahl and Matthias Laschke from the University of Siegen in Germany, Leandro Tonetto from Unisinos, Brazil and and Tiiu Polma from Montreal University in Canada.) Together we represent research in design for subjective wellbeing, experience design, positive design and participatory design across a range of domains from industrial design, engineering, psychology, interaction design and architecture. In 2017 we launched a research manifesto putting forward our vision for our SIG at the World Design Summit in Montreal (Petermans 2017).

The range of positive emotions experienced in human-product interactions is multifarious. Differentiating positive emotions (e.g., joy, love, hope, and interest) and having an awareness of associated expressive interaction qualities (e.g., playful, careful, persistent and focused interaction) can support designers to influence users' interactions in a favourable way. This paper introduces the development and application of EmotionPrism, a tool for designers to gain a better understanding specific positive emotions and related expressive interaction qualities. EmotionPrism is a collection of movie-sets that represents 25 different positive emotions in dynamic hand-object interactions, combined with theoretical descriptions of the emotions. Designers can use the tool to envision and discuss what kinds of interactions would be appropriate or desirable to incite and to select a set of relevant positive emotions accordingly by referring to the set of information as a repertoire to choose from. The paper first describes characteristics of positive emotions with a focus on expressive behaviour and then discusses considerations for the tool development. The second section reports the process of developing the tool. Thirdly, we present the results of a design workshop in which the tool was used and evaluated.

In this chapter, we outline why and how design can (and cannot) support the sustainable wellbeing of individuals and communities. Building on findings of well-being researchers, we first address the reasons why material well-being, as experienced through the consumption and ownership of products and goods, does not necessarily contribute to subjective wellbeing. On the other hand, products that are valued for the activities and experiences that these enable can be a profound resource for happiness. This discussion provides the foundation for an approach to design for well-being that includes three main ingredients: design for pleasure, personal significance and virtue. These ingredients will be detailed in depth and several directions to design for well-being will be introduced, addressing both challenges and opportunities for design theory and practice.

This paper reports a study that explored the usefulness of positive emotional granularity (PEG) in the product development process. PEG reflects the ability to interpret and represent the experience of positive emotions with precision and specificity. Interviews were conducted with twenty-five design professionals to understand their needs and expectations with respect to the value of PEG in product development processes. Across all product development stages, sixteen PEG benefits were identified and grouped into seven key opportunities: getting in-depth understanding of user emotions, determining the emotional impact of a product, dealing with organizational support, keeping continuity of emotional intentions in communications, facilitating design creativity, strengthening emotional coherence and managing emotions within a product development team. The findings indicate that the benefits of PEG are mainly associated with activities in design conceptualization and evaluation, being less relevant in the embodiment phase. The article also reports on the different attitudes of professionals with different roles in product development towards the relevance of PEG for their practices. The implications for research into facilitating PEG and recommendations for developing design tools are discussed.

The range of positive emotions experienced in human-product interactions is diverse, and understanding the differences and similarities between these positive emotions can support emotion-driven design. Yet, there is little knowledge about what kind of tool would be effective to leverage the differentiated nature of positive emotions in a design process. The current study explores the possibilities to develop design tools that facilitate a nuanced understanding of positive emotions and the considerations for developing such tool. Four new tools were developed that were different regarding how they described distinctiveness of positive emotions, formats, and usages. This paper introduces the tools and reports a focus group study that investigated when and how the tools would be of use in design processes, and their strengths and weaknesses.

This paper presents 'designs with benefits' by capitalising on the joint benefits of sustainability and wellbeing. Designs with benefits are proposed through four ‘in-between’ themes for design goals as a new direction in supporting sustainability through design. We conducted post-hoc case study research on student projects from two studios: a studio working on sustainability, and a studio working on wellbeing. We searched for aspects in the sustainable studio's work that would promote wellbeing, and, conversely, for aspects in the wellbeing studio's work that would promote sustainability. Looking at three student projects we selected from each studio resulted in four themes we propose as in-betweens to open the door towards crossover approaches. They are: open reflection, pathway activities, resource and material preservation as side effect, and broader insights. Examples of design work illustrating the themes are given and implications for sustainable design discussed.

Background Card-based design tools have gained popularity as a means to communicate research insights and to make them usable in a design process.There are various examples of card tools and guidelines for developing a card set itself, yet there has been little research into how the usage of card tools can be systematically formulated.Although the existing literature on card tools often presents certain usages, it rarely explicates how the usage was structured, and provides few references to the underlying decisions. MethodsThrough a case study of the positive emotional granularity cards, this paper presents a bottom-up approach in which designers' needs and their own techniques to use the cards are reflected in formulating new card usage guidelines.Three design workshops were conducted, each of which explored how designers made use of the cards in the three design activities respectively: (1) assimilating nuances of positive emotions; (2) specifying emotional intentions; and (3) generating product ideas.In a creative session with design researchers, the workshop findings were translated into usage guidelines. ResultsThere were individual differences in designers' ability to make use of the PEG cards.At one end of the spectrum was the designer who immediately started to play and explore the cards, creating his or her own usage rules.At the other end of the spectrum was the designer who needed instructions to get started.Most designers explored usage, but at the same time they felt insecure about getting value without having some guidance.The workshops allowed us to spot the benefits and drawbacks of the techniques the designers used, and to identify their needs in using the PEG cards.The creative session resulted in the PEG card guidelines that assist and inspire designers in the three design activities.Conclusions Provisional usage guidelines can considerably contribute to a card tool's usefulness, even if the card usage is envisioned to be open-ended and versatile.The bottom-up approach proved valuable to generate new insights into how a card set can best be used and how designers can be guided when using the card set.

User experience research has reached a good understanding of the importance of hedonic attributes and how to evoke emotions through design. Yet, there is only little knowledge on how to sustain and optimize positive emotions derived from a positive experience. This article introduces a novel approach to design for pleasure: by embracing savoring as a design principle, affective benefits of positive experiences can be prolonged and enhanced. Three corresponding design examples will illustrate this approach.

This paper discusses an approach to possibility-driven design as an alternative to traditional problem-driven design approaches. the first parts discuss merits and challenges when design- ing for possibilities, and present some examples of existing design theories that exemplify the potential contribution of this view on design. Next, a five-staged possibility-driven design pro- cess is introduced, in which personal anecdotes are collected, selected, and analysed as a main fuel for the design process. a design case is reported that applied this process to the design of office furniture. a positive, personal anecdote of an office worker about ‘dissolving in the mo- ment’ was selected as the main design theme for designing a novel experience in the office mediated by a chair. the design case is used to discuss details of a possibility-driven design approach. finally, we reflect on the suitability of the approach for different design scenarios, its limitations, and possible (future) applications.

Despite substantial research and development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies, their acceptance remains low. This is partially caused by a lack of accounting for users' needs and values, and the social contexts these systems are to be embedded in. Participatory design has some potential to overcome these issues, but still a high threshold in commitment, (financial) investment and effort remains for potential users, who are often not familiar with the technology, its benefits and its user experience. Our goal is to reduce the threshold by allowing people to take a 'sneak peek' in a neutral setting to experience possible benefits of an AAL system and its interaction without the need to commit. In the paper we propose introducing AAL technology through mediator installations. We present three core design qualities for such mediators exemplified in a design case.

This paper addresses how design activities can be supported to evoke nuanced positive emotions through a design case. The topic of nuances of positive emotions and values of differentiating positive emotions in a design process are discussed. The case follows appraisal approach, which implicates that the way people appraise an event determines the type of emotion. Design students created design interventions to specifically elicit one out of ten positive emotions in the context of an airline crew center: anticipation, confidence, energized, inspiration, joy, kindness, pride, relaxation, respect, and sympathy. Three examples are provided to show how the approach has been used to generate design concepts. Reflecting on the design process, nine lessons are outlined, all of which discusses the challenges involved in the approach and how those challenges could be overcome.