Designing for Well-being during Covid-19

Designing for Well-being during Covid-19: Converting daily activities into [un]conscious pursuits of joy

Orçun, S.E. (TU Delft Industrial Design Engineering; TU Delft Human-Centered Design)

Desmet, P.M.A. (mentor)
Sonneveld, M.H. (graduation committee)

Delft University of Technology

Design for Interaction

2021-11-29

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented public health crisis worldwide starting from the early days of 2020. Alongside the medical concerns, a set of measures called non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs) affected daily lives of people drastically, in turn having a negative impact on subjective well-being (Berg, 2021; Wang et al., 2020a, b).
One of the evident reasons for this is the obstruction of daily activities and disrupted routines of people. From a humanistic perspective routines and habits are built towards positive experiences as our behaviors are motivated by need fulfillment, and hence they are reliable sources contributing to one’s subjective well-being. Research by Desmet and Fokkinga (2020) states that there are 13 universal psychological human needs that are the basic requirements for the functioning of an organism. Supported by a body of research, these needs are ‘built-in’ to the human nature that fulfillment of them is subject to enhance a person’s feelings of well-being (Ryff & Keyes, 1995; Ryan & Deci, 2000). This project focuses on contributing to the subjective well-being of young adults in daily life in the context of Covid-19, and for this theory of 13 Fundamental Needs is chosen to be operationalized.
The dynamics of 13 Fundamental Needs were explored for future possibilities to operationalize the theory and to understand the daily manifestations of need fulfillment by collecting daily moments. Through this intervention research, how the theory can be operationalized was explored. The observations of the intervention using this need-based theory showed an opportunity to lead people towards new and fulfilling engagements in daily life within the limits of the current NPIs.
Based on this understanding a constructive framework, influenced by experiential learning model, was built on sustaining enjoyable engagements. According to this framework people would be motivated to repeat engagements either when they find or they think they will find joy through these engagements. 
Generative interviews were conducted with 11 young adults to understand the effect of Covid-19 on their daily lives and routines, and in terms of need fulfillment. These interviews showed five main influential factors within the context, leading to languishing: not feeling in control and not motivated to take action, accompanied by a limited perception of behavior space.
Personas were developed in order to understand and address each of their needs better. The framework was detailed further as the findings were implemented. This new layer added to the framework defined the point of intervention using a need-based tool as well as the moment. The scope of the project was narrowed down to converting daily activities into pursuits of joy. Design criteria was refined and design vision was set as: encouraging young adults who are languishing to pursue joy in daily life by facilitating an experiential understanding and exploration of 13 sources of joy. Towards this goal a concept was created and refined through an iterative design process. Cue cards under 13 categories were created that lead to authentic and fulfilling experiences that makes the user focus on each of the 13 Fundamental Needs individually through the same activity. The concept was tested as a card set through the final test with 6 users over the course of 10 days, and the framework was validated as the need-based intervention led to sustained enjoyable experiences. A last set of iterations were made to design the user journey of the concept better to accompany long term use. Unravel_cooking kit was created as the design implementation of the final concept: an explorative journey that aims to show how a mundane activity that has been overlooked can bear so many enjoyments.

Well-being
Humanistic approach
Covid-19
Languishing
13 Fundamental Needs
Experiential learning

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:5371f306-19c3-4d26-8723-af7d380fdbac

Student theses

master thesis

© 2021 S.E. Orçun