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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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. [...]

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).

"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.

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.

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.

The influence of design on wellbeing and happiness in research is growing across various design domains, including products, services, systems, and environments. Despite the existence of theories addressing wellbeing and happiness, a challenge remains to bring them to life through applied design studies and reflections involving these domains, which we touch upon in this editorial. In this theme track, we focus on contributions from design in fulfilling the societal need to promote wellbeing and happiness, aligned with the conference theme: Resistance, Recovery, Reflection, Reimagination. The insights from the papers presented in this editorial underscore the complexity of designing for wellbeing, encompassing individual and community levels across various domains. Embracing a multidisciplinary approach, leveraging technology, deepening our understanding of human behavior, and exploring innovative interventions that enhance well-being reflect our growth as a Special Interest Group within the Design Research Society.

Urban spaces play a crucial role in shaping the happiness of individuals and communities. However, understanding the factors that contribute to urban happiness is challenging due to the complex and subjective nature of the concept, as well as the scattered nature of the relevant literature. This paper presents a systematic review aimed at identifying the factors that contribute to the happiness of citizens in urban public spaces. The review, which followed the PRISMA method, includes literature from eight academic search engines covering the period from 2000 to 2023. A total of 57 papers were analyzed, resulting in the identification of 64 factors across eight domains: physical, ecological, visual, functional, social, subjective, political, and personal aspects. This comprehensive overview of these factors provides a broad landscape of influences on urban happiness. Policymakers and urban planners can use this overview to enhance citizens’ quality of life and happiness.

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. [...]

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.

Wist je dat er ten minste 23 ingrediënten zijn voor een gelukkig leven?

In deze doos vind je ze allemaal!
Nieuwsgierigheid, Vrijheid, Medeleven, Vriendschap, Veiligheid, Ontspanning en nog veel meer.

Elke kaart biedt een korte beschrijving en twee inspirerende afbeeldingen. Gebruik de kaarten om positieve gesprekken te starten, je creativiteit te prikkelen, en geluk te brengen aan anderen—en natuurlijk ook aan jezelf.

Wat zit er in de doos?
- 10 kaarten met positieve emoties
- 13 kaarten met universele behoeften
- Een korte handleiding met gebruikstips

Voor wie?

Voor iedereen vanaf 10 jaar die nieuwsgierig is naar geluk.

Veel plezier met het ontdekken van jouw bouwstenen van geluk!

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.

Background: Because the fulfillment of basic/fundamental psychological needs affects people’s motivation and well-being, measuring the degree to which these needs are met is of interest to researchers across various domains. Although numerous self-assessment tools have been developed, no recent comprehensive reviews exist, hindering cumulative scientific progress. The present systematic review aimed to identify and analyze the main approaches to developing self-report scales for assessing basic/fundamental psychological need fulfillment. The objective is to inform readers interested in selecting instruments for their studies and those intending to develop new scales.

Methods: Following PRISMA, we conducted a search of Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and ProQuest in August 2023. The following information was extracted from eligible studies: Scale name, abbreviation, theoretical basis, application domain, final scale construction, scale development and validation methodology, and citation count.

Results: Our search identified 32 primary studies, in which 31 original scales were developed and validated, and 89 secondary studies that aimed to modify these original scales. The predominant theoretical basis was Self-Determination Theory, although eight scales were based on alternative need typologies. The scales were either domain-general or specific to contexts such as work, education, or exercise/sports contexts. While most were designed to measure need satisfaction, some also addressed need support, frustration, and thwarting.

Conclusion: Despite significant efforts in developing, adapting, and applying scales to measure need fulfillment, we found several issues resulting from diverse perspectives on conceptualizing psychological needs and need typologies, discordant approaches in developing and validating measures, and other inconsistencies that should be acknowledged and addressed in future research.

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.