While recent research highlights the potential of social robots to support mood regulation, little is known about how prospective users view their integration into everyday life. To explore this, we conducted an exploratory case study that used a speculative robot concept—Mora—to provoke reflection and facilitate meaningful discussion about using social robots to manage subtle, day-to-day emotional experiences. We focused on the “Sunday Blues,” a common dip in mood that occurs at the end of the weekend, as a relatable context in which to explore individuals’ insights. Using a video prototype and a co-constructing stories method, we engaged 15 participants in imagining interactions with Mora and discussing their expectations, doubts, and concerns. The study surfaced a range of nuanced reflections around the attributes of social robots like empathy, intervention effectiveness, and ethical boundaries, which we translated into design considerations for future research and development in human-robot interaction. ... Read more

By exploring the potential of liminal design for museums and exhibitions through the intentional juxtaposition of the familiar and the unfamiliar, we offer perspectives to ignite visitors’ imagination. The theoretical framework connecting liminality, transformative experiences, and juxtaposition anchors a practical three-step model that showcases how museums can offer liminal experiences with narrative engagement, optimal abstraction, and suspension of disbelief. Concepts are illustrated with examples, including the Seattle Asian Art Museum, Victoria and Albert, Brera, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. The specific dynamics of interactive technology, immersive exhibits, and multimedia are discussed as additional thresholds and juxtapositions creating liminality that can offer deeper and more meaningful visitor experiences. ... Read more

Design without emotion falls flat. This book shows how to harness emotion to create products that connect, engage, and make a lasting impact.
Why do some products become beloved while others are quickly forgotten? Design profoundly shapes our lives, often in unnoticed but significant ways. Every design—from simple everyday products to complex systems and services—elicits emotions that influence our decisions, behavior, and well-being. Yet, the emotional dimension of design remains underexplored, leaving a wealth of opportunities untapped. This book addresses this gap, revealing how designers can harness emotions to create products and services that users genuinely love and can't live without.

Targeted at designers, marketing & innovation professionals, and students, the book offers practical tools and methods to integrate emotional insights into the design process. Readers will learn to navigate the fundamental human needs, choose the right emotion to spark behavior, create emotion blueprints, and resolve need clashes. Through real-world case studies, foundational research, and hands-on exercises, it equips readers to move beyond functionality and aesthetics, creating designs that resonate deeply with users.

With over 30 years of combined expertise in design, emotion research, and consultancy with global brands, the authors provide a comprehensive framework grounded in scientific theories and practical applications. The book stands out by using the science of emotion to connect practical design considerations to humanistic principles. ... Read more

The alarm clock designs are based on a typology of 13 fundamental needs developed by Desmet and Fokkinga (2020), as outlined in their work Beyond Maslow’s pyramid: Introducing a typology of thirteen fundamental needs for human-centered design (Multimodal technologies and interaction, 4(3), 38). ... Read more

"What If...?" – Activity Workbook

This workbook is a practical toolkit filled with creative exercises designed to guide young people (ages 10–14) through a step-by-step design process focused on complex social issues (e.g., poverty, inequality, climate change, divorce, mental health, bullying).

It supports the facilitator’s guide and offers ready-to-use worksheets and creative tools. ... Read more

Design for mood regulation is an emerging design area that is gaining growing interest. However, there is limited guidance on what designers should consider when creating interventions to support mood regulation. To address this gap, we conducted an exploratory case study focused on the “Sunday Blues”—a common dip in mood experienced at the end of the weekend as the new workweek approaches. We designed WeMo, a system aimed at helping users capture weekend highlights, culminating in a visual summary displayed on Monday. We engaged 15 participants in co-constructing stories around their potential use of the system. Participants expressed frustrations with the system’s features, concerns about its effectiveness, and obstacles to its application in daily life. Based on these insights, we highlight key considerations for designing mood-regulation interventions, such as balancing mood regulation with other fundamental needs, addressing the complex roots of mood, and respecting the acceptance of negative moods. By identifying user concerns and translating them into design considerations, this study provides actionable guidance for practitioners and contributes to the growing body of research in mood-focused design. ... Read more

Despite the ever-changing wishes and desires accompanying today’s rapid pace of technological innovation, basic psychological needs remain enduring sources for human functioning, development, and well-being. A shared language of needs, further with design-oriented measurement tools, can inform and inspire initiatives in user-centred and/or human-centred design research and practice. [...] ... Read more

3D food printing is an emerging processing technology with a profound impact on both the food industry and consumer experiences. It currently makes it possible to process a wide range of food materials into custom-designed and safe-to-consume 3D printed foods. One notable application lies in the creation of customized, fully edible packaging using ingredients that are safe for human consumption. The study presented in this paper examined consumer attitudes and emotions to 3D printed edible packaging in gastronomic experiences, comparing a milk chocolate snack served in a fully 3D printed edible chocolate packaging to one served in a traditional ceramic packaging. The results show that compared to the ceramic packaging, the edible packaging elicits higher levels of surprise, fascination, and desire, thereby increasing the overall positive consumer experience by more than 10 %. Part of this work aims to familiarize consumers with this innovative type of 3D food, demonstrating its relevance and potential to the food industry. The findings contribute to understanding consumer attitudes towards 3D printed foods and suggest a new potential field of research establishing a path to strengthen its common application in gastronomy. ... Read more

Generative AI systems are increasingly capable of expressing emotions through text, imagery, voice, and video. Effective emotional expression is particularly relevant for AI systems designed to provide care, support mental health, or promote wellbeing through emotional interactions. This research aims to enhance understanding of the alignment between AI-expressed emotions and human perception. How can we assess whether an AI system successfully conveys a specific emotion? To address this question, we designed a method to measure the alignment between emotions expressed by generative AI and human perceptions. Three generative image models—DALL-E 2, DALL-E 3, and Stable Diffusion v1—were used to generate 240 images expressing five positive and five negative emotions in both humans and robots. Twenty-four participants recruited via Prolific rated the alignment of AI-generated emotional expressions with a string of text (e.g., “A robot expressing the emotion of amusement”). Our results suggest that generative AI models can produce emotional expressions that align well with human emotions; however, the degree of alignment varies significantly depending on the AI model and the specific emotion expressed. We analyze these variations to identify areas for future improvement. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings on the design of emotionally expressive AI systems. ... Read more

This paper introduces the Fundamental User Needs (FUN) Scales, tailored to measure need satisfaction and frustration in design-mediated interactions. The development and initial validation process included a preparation phase and four studies. Adopting a deductive approach, we generated a pool of 780 items and distilled them into the first version of the FUN Scales: a 52-item Need Satisfaction Scale and a 52-item Need Frustration Scale. Content validity was assessed by nine experts, leading to a refined second version. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with 502 participants examined the scales’ factorial structure, reliability, and validity, resulting in a finalized version with 39 items per scale. Finally, we proposed two scoring approaches to facilitate scale application. The FUN Scales can serve as a robust diagnostic tool for quantifying the psychological impact of design and technology through the lens of need fulfillment, offering structure and inspiration for human-centered design research and practice. ... Read more

"What If...?" – A Guide for Facilitators

This guide is designed to help educators, youth workers, and coaches engage young people (ages 10–14) in creative design processes to explore and respond to complex social issues such as poverty, inequality, climate change, or family separation. ... Read more

Acts of kindness can enhance well-being for both actors and recipients. Consequently, numerous products and technologies have been created to foster such behaviors. However, existing design interventions often assume that any kind act will positively impact well-being, neglecting factors that determine whether acts will actually enhance actor and recipient well-being. To address this gap, we conducted an explorative investigation into everyday kindness dynamics. Through a diary study capturing 137 everyday acts of kindness, we identified 13 factors across three categories (context, characteristics, and outcomes) that influence actor and recipient wellbeing. We organized these insights into an exploratory framework and tested its application in a workshop with designers that explored the practical applications of these factors in intervention design. Our findings demonstrate that kindness impacts depend on complex interrelationships between factors such as timeliness and fit with individuals. These insights support designers in moving beyond encouraging random acts to orchestrating interventions that consider both actor and recipient experiences, creating more meaningful and impactful kindness interventions. ... Read more

This study explores the ethical complexities of using introspective methods, particularly autoethnography, in design research. Drawing from relevant literature, we identify six significant ethical risks – psychological or emotional, physical, privacy, social, career and economic, and integrity risks – that may be experienced by the researcher, individuals represented in autoethnographic accounts, and the readership at different phases of autoethnographic research. These unique risks stem from the dual role of ‘researcher as subject’ and highlight the inadequacy of conventional ethical frameworks in addressing them. In response, we developed the Introspector’s Toolkit for Responsible Practice, a practical resource designed to guide researchers through a pre-study self-consent ritual and support continuous ethical reflection throughout their research. The toolkit integrates multidimensional ethics, meta-autoethnographies, and critical reflective practices to provide a theoretically sound yet practical, structured yet dynamic approach to managing the ethical complexities of autoethnography. While this toolkit represents a promising step towards more ethically responsible and reflective use of autoethnography in design research, it is intended as a foundational resource, open to iterative refinement based on researcher feedback and evolving ethical challenges. ... Read more

Part 2 of this article introduces the Experience Design Introspection (XDI) workshop. This educational initiative aims to nurture designers’ emotional connoisseurship through a sensibility-oriented approach. We begin by discussing the philosophical underpinnings of XDI, which include non-dualism, pluralism, and long-termism. We then outline three operational principles that guided the development of the XDI and the techniques used to achieve them. To illustrate the practical application of the XDI workshop, we provide a comprehensive walkthrough of a two-and-a-half-hour trial version, which also served as a platform for reflection and iterative improvement. In the final sections, we present participants’ feedback and envision the evolution of the XDI from a time-bound workshop to a community-based learning model. This model aims to foster long-term engagement, personalized cultivation, authentic social learning, and a culture of introspection and sharing that extends beyond the lecture room and studio. ... Read more

The ‘Three Good Things’ (TGT), a structured journaling exercise, has shown great effect in helping improve mental well-being. However, the exercise could be quite tedious and difficult to carry out daily. To improve the user experience of the exercise, we developed ‘Happy Click’, a mobile application which makes use of a physically present smart button to enable users to record their daily TGT in a more engaging manner. Two preliminary exploratory studies were carried out to examine the feasibility of our approach where the effects of the TGT intervention designed around the mobile and tangible happy click concepts were examined. The findings suggested that participants had significantly less stress after carrying out the TGT using the tangible interface. Participants also reported better user experience and acceptance when carrying out the exercise using the tangible interface compared to the mobile and higher levels of attractiveness and stimulation with the mobile TGT compared to the traditional approach. While these promising results should be interpreted with caution due to the limited sample size, they also underscore the potential advantages of our ‘Happy click’ approach and highlight the need for further, larger-scale evaluations to be conducted to validate its efficacy and scalability. ... Read more

Since 2015, I have had the pleasure of writing a regular column for the Dutch Journal of Positive Psychology, in which I present projects that explore how design can enhance well-being. In 2018, the first 10 columns were published as Volume 1, followed by Volume 2 in 2020. [...] ... Read more

Existing studies of technology supporting meditation habit formation mainly focus on mobile applications which support users via reminders. A potentially more effective source of motivation could be contextual cues provided by meaningful objects in meaningful locations. This longitudinal mixed-methods 8-week study explored the effectiveness of such an object, Prana, in supporting forming meditation habits among seven novice meditators. First, the Meditation Intentions
Questionnaire-24 and the Determinants of Meditation Practice Inventory-Revised were administered. The self-report habit index (SrHI) was administered before and after the study. Prana recorded meditation session times, while daily diaries captured subjective experiences. At the end of the study, the system usability scale, the ten-item personality inventory, and the brief self-control scale were completed, followed by individual semi-structured interviews. We expected to find an increase in meditation frequency and temporal consistency, but the results failed to confirm this. Participants meditated for between 16% and 84% of the study. The frequency decreased with time for four, decreased with subsequent increase for two, and remained stable for one of them. Daily meditation experiences were positive, and the perceived difficulty to start meditating was low. No relevant correlation was found between the perceived difficulty in starting to meditate and meditation experience overall; the latter was only weakly associated with the likelihood of meditating the next day. While meditation became more habitual for six participants, positive scores on SrHI were rare. Despite the inconclusive results, this study provides valuable insights into challenges and benefits of using a meditation device, as well as potential methodological difficulties in studying habit formation with physical devices. ... Read more

This two-part article explores the concept of emotional connoisseurship—the art of appreciating lived emotional experiences in emotion-driven design (EDD). In Part 1, we aim to establish and position the concept within the current EDD theoretical landscape. We first review the concept of connoisseurship, its origins, development, and relevance to professional practices. Second, building upon the existing design literature, we scrutinize the relationships between design connoisseurship and design expertise. We then conceptualize emotional connoisseurship as an essential skill that designers aspiring to practice EDD must actively cultivate, along with learning EDD theories, methods, and tools. After that, we reflect on how previous EDD research outcomes (i.e., emotional granularity design tools) can support the development of a designer’s emotional connoisseurship, especially in a schema-oriented or top-down manner, and argue the need for a sensibility-oriented or bottom-up approach. Part 1 sets the stage for Part 2. Part 2 will detail our pedagogical initiative supporting the self-cultivation of emotional connoisseurship among novice designers through a sensibility-oriented approach. ... Read more

Addressing the widespread use of AI-driven decision-making systems in public spheres, in this paper we advocate for the integration of love as both a virtue and an affection within the discourse of participatory practices in AI design and development. Based on an analysis of justice, the need to shift the focus to love will be highlighted. Furthermore, we introduce two directions love could play during AI design: (1) love as an epistemological design inquiry to question the conventional knowledge structures in design by integrating embodied and experiential knowledge, and (2) love as a political design inquiry to challenge unjust systems in AI. We underscore the necessity for critical inquiry, recognizing both love’s potential to nurture relationships and its potential for perpetuating inequalities. By proposing love as a foundational perspective in AI design and development, we encourage a paradigm shift and challenge exclusionary mechanisms, to cultivate just and democratic AI futures. ... Read more