Facing terminality is a traumatic experience, one which entails a reorientation of one’s entire meaning system. Hospice care is an approach which aims to provide comfort in the face of this turmoil, through the pursuit and provision of quality of life and a good death, facilitated through the alignment of care decisions and resources with patient’s personal values.

For incurable head and neck cancer patients, the pursuit of ‘a good death’ is challenged as a result of their particularly short life expectancy – five months. This leaves patients with limited time to reorient, reassess, and reflect on what their values and priorities are in the unexpected face of death. Further complicating these efforts is the population’s elderly male demographic, wherein the influence of gender stigmas, taboos and cultural norms presents a cohort who are adverse to emotional vulnerability and expression.

Through an extensive literature review, in concert with secondary findings across forums, blogs, testimonies and conferences, the context of HNC hospice was mapped across three dimensions – the environment, the person, and the cognitive processes. Through delineation of findings, a solution space was identified and mapped, and an exploratory cycle undertaken in order to answer the core tension – discovering the fundamental meanings of the emotionally avoidant.

This project presents a theoretically grounded framework, which utilises the lens of legacy and life stories to act as a mediating interface between patients and clinicians, surfacing fundamental meanings and facilitating the alignment of care resources towards QoL through a shared understanding. In tandem, it answers patients desire to prevent suffering in loved ones after their death through the creation of a legacy document, which they can bequeath and which will provide comfort and a preserved sense of relatedness even after death.

This framework is presented in concert with a set of protocol considerations which dictate application and embodiment considerations for the frameworks successful deployment, including both within, and external to, the HNC domain, representing opportunities for its deployment in hospice care across the terminally ill, as well as its applicability in trajectories pre-hospice.

This dissertation aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of mood-focused design through an integrative exploration of (1) how design researchers have understood and approached mood in their work, (2) how design practitioners have incorporated and addressed user or customer mood in real-world projects, and (3) how we, as researcher-designers, can understand and help address people’s mood in everyday contexts.

The dissertation begins with a scoping review of mood-related design literature. The findings reveal three conceptual categories of mood-focused design—mood-monitoring, mood-expressing, and mood-regulating design—and identify specific design issues associated with each category, together with strategies proposed to address them. Together, these findings provide a useful lens for clarifying what may be considered mood-focused design initiatives and offer actionable guidance for such efforts.

The second strand draws on interviews with design practitioners, adding nuance to the picture that emerged from the literature. The findings show that mood is addressed in practice in multiple ways: as an end in itself, and as a means to enhance engagement, enrich experience, create differentiation or strategic advantage, and facilitate user research. These findings further demonstrate that mood-regulating design, as one category of mood-focused design, may be oriented either toward intrinsic well-being goals or toward more instrumental, outcome-driven goals in real-world projects.

The third strand consists of our own practice-based exploration as researcher-designers, grounded in a specific everyday mood phenomenon: the “Sunday Blues,” a dip in mood often experienced during the transition from Sunday to Monday. Through a qualitative inquiry into its manifestations, contributing factors, and coping strategies, this strand illustrates how a subtle everyday mood phenomenon can be studied in depth. Through the design and evaluation of speculative interventions for the “Sunday Blues,” it also generates user-centered insights into how mood-regulating design may be meaningfully embedded in everyday life.

By integrating insights from design researchers, design practitioners, and our own exploration as researcher-designers, this dissertation offers a more explicit and comprehensive understanding of mood-focused design. It articulates key conceptual categories, reveals pragmatic orientations in the ways mood is incorporated into real-world design practice, and provides situated examples and considerations for engaging with mood in everyday contexts. In doing so, it supports the development of cumulative knowledge on mood-focused design and offers a foundation for addressing mood in a more systematic and impactful way in both research and practice.

Teamwork is a big part of society, and teams are seen as essential to effective collaboration at work and in educational environments. Effective teamwork is dependent on a variety of factors, one of which is the interplay of emotions. Self-confidence is an emotion that can benefit the individual by making them feel secure and at ease, believing in themselves and their abilities.
Circumstances and factors such as team dynamics can cause a student to experience moments of insecurity. This project aims to understand the needs, difficulties, and overall experiences of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) students with moments of insecurity during teamwork activities. Taking the theory of embodied emotion as inspiration, the goal of the project was to design an intervention that could boost their feeling of self-confidence through tactile sensations in those moments.

The project started off with a comprehensive literature review to understand the role of self-confidence in design teams, defining the subjective experiences and behavioural expressions that make up self-confidence. A clear gap in concreteness was discovered, highlighting the need for insights about the experiences of the target group.

Through a series of qualitative research activities with the target group, it was discovered that moments of insecurity occurred mainly during brainstorming sessions, when they felt unheard or undervalued. This caused them to switch to a negatively connotated, passive participation state in which they began to lose passion for the project, following others without expressing their own opinions, while feeling tense and uncomfortable. In contrast to self-confidence, which was described as feeling calm and in control, not being afraid to take up space, both with their input as well as their bodies.

Designing a playful tool that provides them with a way of self-soothing, offers a subtle way to embrace these moments of retreat, while simultaneously encouraging them to switch back to an active state whenever they feel ready.
Through an iterative process of ideation, tactile exploration and evaluation, the concept of a chair was developed. The final design aspires to normalise moments of calm, providing the user with sensory comfort through a playful interaction that evokes a feeling of safety and reassurance. In this way, an object that is always present as a physical support can now also function as a mental support in times of insecurity.

A final evaluation showed that the design successfully evoked sensory comfort through playful interactions, with associations with safety and relaxation. However, further refinement is needed to enhance its effectiveness in portraying encouragement for an active state and not only a passive one.

Overall, this thesis aims to provide valuable insights into the experiences, needs and values of IDE students concerning self-confidence and teamwork, and the potential of a design intervention to tackle a part of the discovered issues. Aspiring to contribute to the well-being of students in teamwork environments, and normalise moments of rest in a passive state. Using a playful, calming tool to ultimately enhance their brainstorming experiences, boosting individuals’ feelings of self-confidence in teamwork through embodied emotion.

Young adults (18-30) frequently experience rumination after relationship conflicts—replaying conversations and emotions without resolution. While AI-enabled emotional support tools have emerged, most provide either validation or problem-solving approaches, rarely integrating both to support reflective processing. This thesis explores how multi-agent AI dialogue can help young adults break post-conflict rumination patterns by balancing immediate emotional validation with guided perspective-taking.

Through a Research through Design approach, I developed Bunny, a multi-agent AI system featuring two conversational agents—Protective Bunny for emotional validation and Objective Bunny for alternative perspectives—alongside a pattern reflection feature that synthesizes insights from users' conversation history. The design evolved through six prototype iterations informed by diary studies with five participants, culminating in an evaluation study with four participants using conversation analysis, semi-structured interviews, and User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ).
Findings reveal that participants valued the multi-agent dialogue structure and found pattern reflections insightful in identifying emotional triggers. However, the evaluation uncovered critical design tensions: the balance between exploratory questioning and users' need for concrete guidance, the challenge of appropriate conversational pacing, and the importance of giving users control over conversation endpoints. Participants showed strong interest in using Bunny for future conflicts (77.5% average on 0-100 scale, n=4), while expressing needs for more adaptive interaction strategies.

This work demonstrates both the potential and challenges of multi-agent conversational AI for relationship emotional support. The primary contribution is a design framework that explores how AI role configurations and interaction patterns can support post-conflict emotional processing. Through iterative prototyping and evaluation, this research identifies design tensions: the balance between validation and perspective-shifting, the challenge of appropriate conversational pacing, and the need for user control over therapeutic dialogue structure. These findings provide design implications for future AI systems supporting intimate emotional processing, particularly regarding the need for adaptive mechanisms that respond to individual users' emotional readiness and communication preferences.

This dissertation explores how consumer technology can foster lasting improvements in wellbeing. Consumer technologies - social networking sites, communication tools, and streaming platforms - have become omnipresent, fundamentally shaping how we live, work, and connect. They kickstart our mornings, keep our schedules on track, and curate the soundtrack to our days. They capture cherished memories, help us plan global adventures, and guide us to new experiences. Far beyond mere utilities, they have become integral companions in our daily routines, holding immense potential to enhance wellbeing when designed with care and intention. Yet despite this potential, consumer technology is the focus of intense debate. Concerns have mounted around its overuse, its detrimental effects on teenage mental health, its role in fueling distraction and societal polarization, and its contribution to spreading misinformation.....

This graduation project describes the expansion and revision of a human-centred design method through the integration of introspective activities. The expansion is supported by an explorative, individual case study and a validating, collaborative case study.

In a previous research project, Siyuan Huang and myself developed an initial version of the activity-based need profiling method. The activity-based need profiling method investigates an activity (activity-based) through which fundamental needs are fulfilled by the experience of the activity (need profiling). The goal of the design method is to provide a way for novice designers to become familiar with the typology of fundamental needs by Desmet and Fokkinga (2020) and to apply this abstract typology in a concrete design process.

The addition of introspective activities in the data collection phase of the design method could add more richness and nuance to the data. It was also expected to add extra value to the design method, by broadening the reach and introducing novice designers to another way of collecting data. In this graduation project, I set about investigating the value of these introspective activities and how they could best be integrated in the design method, through two case studies.

In the first case study, I introspected for two weeks on which fundamental needs were fulfilled in what way in the context of food-preparation related activities in my own home kitchen. I used this introspective data to create a set of narratives, that were the source of a set of design briefs and concepts. These concepts were evaluated in a user test to ascertain the value of the revised design method.

In the second case study, I used the insights from the first case study to make an iteration on the design method. I evaluated this version of the method with its target group of novice designers in two design workshops. The workshop participants introspected on food-preparation activities in their own kitchens and took the resulting narratives to the design workshop, where they collaboratively designed concepts through the process of the proposed design method.

Both case studies showed the value of the addition of introspective activities, enriching the data with nuance and authenticity. The results from the case studies were integrated in the initial design method, which yielded the following five phases of the revised and expanded activity-based need profiling method.

- The preparation phase, where designers familiarise themselves with the design method and identify an activity to investigate.
- The data collection phase, where designers collect information on need fulfilment within the activity, either introspectively or through external participants. They investigate which needs are satisfied and which are harmed and why this is the case.
- The data overview phase, where designers create both a visual overview as well as a more detailed overview of the collected data.
- The exploration phase, where designers use three strategies, or play modes, to translate the data into design briefs.
- The realisation phase, where designers create design concepts based on the design briefs, validate them and iterate on them.

This project presents the development and implementation of a toolkit designed to embrace neurodiversity within design teams, fostering inclusivity and enhancing collaboration. Design teams are increasingly recognized for their potential to drive innovation through diversity. However, while diversity in gender, nationality, and expertise has been embraced, neurodiversity remains an overlooked dimension. Neurodiversity refers to the variation in cognitive functioning that naturally occurs within the human population.

Design teams often overlook neurodiversity, missing out on unique perspectives and innovative solutions. Neurodiverse individuals posses unique traits in the form of challenges and strengths which impact team dynamics and performance. This toolkit is designed to help design teams understand and leverage each other’s unique strengths and challenges to foster a more inclusive and collaborative team environment.

The toolkit consists of several key elements: trait cards to help identify and discuss neurodiverse traits, prompt cards to guide structured and meaningful conversations, puzzle pieces to symbolize the unique contributions of each team member, a comic to introduce the concept of neurodiversity in an engaging manner, an instruction sheet for clear guidance, and a sticker sheet for personalizing puzzle pieces. Through these components, the toolkit aims to create a supportive environment where all cognitive styles are valued and leveraged for collective success.

This project underscores the importance of recognizing and embracing neurodiversity, ultimately leading to more effective, collaborative, and innovative design teams.

Mood shapes our behavior and interactions. We regulate our own mood, for example, by seeking support from others, while also attempting to influence the moods of those around us. In service settings, this regulation is crucial, as customer experience and satisfaction largely depend on frontline interactions where mood impacts perceptions of service quality. Service providers who can recognize and regulate their own mood, as well as identify and adapt to client moods, can enhance customer satisfaction while supporting their own well-being. Emotional Intelligence (EI) plays a key role in this process, equipping providers to manage these interactions effectively. Providers can be supported in skillfully managing both their own and clients' moods through designed products, targeted interventions, and training programs. However, while mood’s impact is well-recognized and some training efforts focus on self-regulation, empathy, and communication, research on how service providers manage client moods still requires investigation, and there is a lack of specific training for interpersonal mood regulation in service contexts.
This thesis investigates the role of mood and interpersonal mood regulation (IMR) within one-on-one service encounters, such as those between government employees and citizens or healthcare providers and patients. The study addresses four key questions: (1) understanding the role of mood in service encounters, (2) identifying IMR strategies used by service providers, (3) developing tools to support IMR strategies, and (4) evaluating the effectiveness of these tools.
Through an experience sampling study, the first chapter introduces a “Framework of Mood-Sensitive Interaction” highlighting service providers' ability to manage their own moods and those of clients. The framework’s four components—noticing own mood, regulating own mood, interpreting client's mood, and adjusting communication—provide a foundation for nine interpersonal mood regulation strategies: Understanding, Calming, Encouraging, Sociable, Efficient, Apologetic, Tolerating, Blunt, and Distant. To communicate these strategies, three tools are developed and validated: IMR strategy cards, videos, and character-based animations, each aiming to facilitate interpersonal mood regulation skills for service providers. Findings suggest these tools help service providers become aware of the strategies and help them to talk about them.
This work contributes to positive design and organizational psychology by providing practical tools and insights for training programs aimed at enhancing client-provider interactions and service-provider well-being. It offers foundations for future research and practice in designing for interpersonal mood regulation.

Group mood, often referred to as the "vibe" of the group, plays a significant role in organizational functioning, influencing team effectiveness, performance, outcomes, and workplace well-being. Despite its importance, group mood is often elusive—easy to sense but difficult to fully understand, describe, and manage. What if teams could actively regulate their group mood to achieve shared goals? Effective management would involve fostering group moods that are beneficial to group activities while preventing or mitigating those that hinder goal achievement. Designed products, services, or interventions may potentially support groups in managing their group mood effectively. A key challenge in designing for group mood management is the lack of contextual understanding of what group mood is and how different group moods manifest. To address this gap, this thesis conceptualizes group mood as an emergent concept with unique qualities and aims to develop a nuanced understanding of group mood in work settings, beyond the basic dichotomy of 'positive versus negative.' This serves as an initial step towards effective group mood management, taking the first step towards developing a dedicated typology. Through a series of studies, this research addresses three primary questions: (1) What types of group moods are experienced in small workgroups? (2) How can group moods be effectively communicated? (3) How can group mood reflection be facilitated? The research begins with a phenomenological inquiry, identifying and describing eight distinct group moods: Chill Flow, Fiery, Creative, Safe Haven, Slack, Tense, Confrontational, and Fuzzy. To communicate these moods effectively, we developed two sets of embodied mediums using an artistic approach—the 'Vibe Image Set' and the 'Vibe Video Set.' Finally, utilizing these mediums, we designed and tested two interventions to facilitate group mood reflection in the context of group work. Our findings provide insights into mood management within small workgroups and offer entry points for future efforts to support it. We envision this thesis as a foundational step toward understanding and shaping group moods within the design domain, offering insights and starting points for future research and practice in designing for group mood management. In professional practice, our research contributions can enable and support workgroups in their efforts to communicate and manage their group moods effectively.

The central question for this thesis project was how you can design outfits and garments that deliberately influence or induce moods. The focus of this project was on both a cheerful mood, as well as on a relaxed mood. It became apparent that the relation between moods and fashion is constructed of many facets. There are materialistic properties of garments that are specific to a mood, such as the use of materials or fit of an outfit. Next to that, moods have an influence on how one feels the need to interact with the people around them, in which clothes can support that need: using an outfit as a shield to hide a mood from the people around them. Lastly, personal meaning towards an outfit has an influence on how it affects one’s mood. When, for example, one wore an outfit in a period in which they felt most cheerful, that outfit carries these memories and meaning with it, transferring it to one’s current affective state.

Intertwined, all of these facets play a role in the way clothes can influence and induce moods. As a designer, it was the task to unravel these aspects and find a way to translate them into design principles for the Fashion Design process. To do so, meaning and experiences that are associated with either a relaxed or cheerful mood were gathered and translated into design principles

What was found is that clothes provide hints of impact on the wearer’s moods. Small changes in their perception, energy level or focus hint towards an indication that a change in their mood had occurred. These changes can include a more productive attitude due to an active sitting posture triggered by an outfit, an optimistic feeling when seeing yellow patches the moment the wearer let his head hang, or a relaxed feeling when you feel hugged by the touch of fabric on your skin. Whilst moods are often longer lasting drivers of behaviour and perceptions, these hints of impact relate to relatively short periods of time in which the outfit is actually worn.

When designing outfits that induce a cheerful mood, it is important to pay attention to increasing the level of confidence of the wearer, making them feel confident and empowered. This results in the implementation of high quality fabrics and finishing of the garments, as well as an outfit that flatters and highlights areas of the body the wearer wants. When inducing a relaxed mood, it is important that the wearer is not conscious about their outfit. Resulting in simple, and neutral outfits that do not give much stimulus to the wearer. What connects these moods with consciousness and confidence is the personal style of the wearer, which is crucial in the process to achieve the wanted effect. When the outfit is not in-line with the personal style of the wearer, they feel conscious about this difference, and feel less confident whilst wearing it since it does not reflect their personality.

This project aimed to transfer a mood-regulating experience by recreating its mood-regulating qualities artificially, seeking an answer to the question whether this is possible and, if so, how. In the early stages, The Attention Restoration Theory by Kaplan (1995) inspired what mood-regulating experiences to design for: the softly fascinating experiences in nature that support the restoration of mental fatigue. A design opportunity revealed itself in realizing that, unlike nature, our indoor environments show few softly fascinating stimuli. This resulted in a design direction aiming to enhance restorative potential indoors by bringing the softly fascinating qualities from the outside in. 

This led to a quest in search of the softly fascinating qualities of nature. It was found that it's the self-similar patterns in motion, like drifting clouds and leaves swaying in the breeze, that attract our attention. It's the quality of unity in variety in the self-similar patterns as well as the movement of the patterns that lures us in this moment of fascination, creating scenes that are "the same, but never the same."

In a process of experimentation and prototyping, three key elements of design were found to establish the fascinating effect of shimmering light patterns as sunbeams pass through dancing leaves: a light source, two patterns, and physical movement. The integration and refinement of these design elements ultimately resulted in a working prototype called Daze.

Results from the final user test show positive results in regards to Daze's potential for restoration. On a 5-point Likert scale, the average ratings of nine participants for the living room's restorative qualities significantly increased with Daze's presence compared to without. Additionally, the majority of participants mentioned feeling fascinated and relaxed by Daze. 

In conclusion, Daze was designed to enhance indoor spaces' restorative potential by introducing softly fascinating qualities from the outside in. The results have shown that Daze is capable of doing so, thereby providing proof of concept: it's possible to transfer restorative nature experiences by recreating its softly fascinating qualities. 

Introspective methods are gaining momentum within the design field. They add a subjective dimension to the existing body of research, enriching our understanding of complex phenomena, human experiences, and psychological processes. The personal, revealing nature of introspection is what gives this method its unique opportunities, however, its risks too. Introspection can pose a variety of risks to the researcher themselves, as well as to those they refer to in their research. The rise of introspection in design must be met with a corresponding commitment to ethical responsibility. To get there, the gap must be addressed between existing procedural ethics and the realities of introspective practice.

This Master thesis researches how we can design to support researchers who use introspection as a method to assess the ethical risks and opportunities of their introspective research and manage these throughout their study. Through literature and empirical research, five risk dimensions and six opportunity categories were identified, providing guiding lenses through which researchers can assess and navigate risks and opportunities (R&O). Through a focus group, interviews, and an introspective self study, three key problems emerged: 1) researchers have little awareness and understanding of potential R&O, 2) it is difficult to look ahead and identify R&O in their own study, and 3) they have little know-how on how to deal with risks (and opportunities). This especially goes for researchers who are new to using introspection as a method.

A toolkit prototype was developed and evaluated with end-users. Evaluation showed that the toolkit provides valuable guidance for researcher practitioners to minimize the risks of their study, while maximizing the opportunities. Based on the evaluation feedback, a final design update was done, resulting in the final design: The Introspector’s Toolkit for Responsible Practice. This toolkit aims to help researchers understand, identify and manage the risks and opportunities of their introspective research. For further development of the toolkit, ten recommendations are proposed, including improving its collaborative use, expanding the content, improving form and interaction, and more elaborate testing.

Every human being and every conscious life form on this planet aims to be happy. Happiness is something everyone is after - consciously or unconsciously. People try to ‘achieve’ it through various actions that are meaningful to them. There are many definitions and interpretations of happiness. Gautam Buddha wisely once said- “There is no path to happiness, happiness is the path.” One tends to naturally wonder whether happiness is a journey, a state, a ‘thing’ to be achieved or is it an object of value? It can best be defined as a state for which certain preconditions are necessary. Many scholars have studied how Architecture and Urban spaces influence our state of happiness.
This project aimed to create positive design interventions in the transition space of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft. These interventions will provide moments of happiness and support a positive state of mind during the daily journey of users across the transition space. The project aimed to find out how best to apply the 20 Urban Happiness Ingredients tool set by Samavati and
Desmet (2021)4 to design a transition experience. Insights from Generative Research were used to conduct Research through Design that used a Positive Design Approach. The main insights found were that the users of the IDE transition space needed to feel the fundamental human needs of security, autonomy and stimulation while in transition. A number of ideation iterations led to the conception of an arch that supported those three needs. The arch was chosen as the embodiment of those needs because historically, it has always been a powerful metaphor for communicating and aiding transition. It allows the bi-directional nature of a transition to be a function, it has deep cultural meanings and it has the ability to frame a great view.
The result of this graduation project is a spatial installation (or spatial product) called ‘Waves of Happiness’. It creates several moments of joy through the interactions that have been designed. The meaning created by the design is that the users must choose to take a meaningful pause while in transition to momentarily forget their worries by experiencing pleasure. These moments of pleasure remind one of pleasant memories such as childhood. The design also builds upon the need for users to practice self reflection and fulfil the virtue of self-care. The form and aesthetics of the design played an important role in satisfying the universal need for beauty. Computational Design techniques were used to design the structure depicting the ‘Waves of Happiness’. User feedback indicated that the users would exit the designed transition experience with a positive state of mind after having experienced moments of joy.
‘Compatibility with needs and desires of users’, Interactive and fascinating design’, ‘Multisensory richness experiences’, ‘Place identity, memorability & city image’ and ‘Aesthetic qualities’ were the 5 main Urban Happiness Ingredients used in the design. The project ended with a discussion on how these ingredients can be applied better to transition experience design and what this master thesis project contributed to the domain of transition experience design.

What do we do when we make a mistake, get rejected at a job interview or by a romantic prospect? Loneliness, loss, and failure are common everyday experiences that every one of us goes through. However, many brush aside such ’emotional injuries’, or even make them worse, ’picking on their wounds’ by engaging in unhelpful coping strategies (Winch, 2013).

Because of our fundamental need to establish meaningful relationships, emotional injuries can be especially painful in our romantic lives. The rapid and often ’impersonal’ nature of modern online dating can enable frequent negative experiences; small rejections and heartbreaks that can negatively impact people’s self-esteem and well-being (Andrighetto et al., 2019; Her & Timmermans, 2021).

Practicing emotional first aid can help to cope with the ’invisible’ pain of such small injuries and help to efficiently recover from them, building resilience that allows people to withstand life’s hardships (Winch, 2013). Designers can help people deal with these injuries by facilitating positive emotional experiences in human-product interactions. Positive design interventions focusing on resilience and self-compassion can contribute to emotion regulation, leading to improved personal and societal well-being (Gilbert & Choden, 2014; Petermans & Cain, 2019; Yoon et al., 2021).

Using a Research through Design approach, the project explored how designers can translate psychological techniques into tangible solutions and introduce positive psychology interventions for emotional injuries in the context of dating.

Using a framework based on 7 everyday injuries outlined by Winch (2013), and the 13 fundamental needs theory of Desmet and Fokkinga (2020) a ’map of injuries’ and corresponding ’injury cards’ were developed based on a diary study with currently dating singles. The map and the cards discuss the triggers and the nature of the possible injuries in addition to the needs to be fulfilled by the design intervention. The map and the cards were used to generate design concepts, which were introduced to experts in social sciences and relationship studies during three separate sessions. Using sketches and short scenarios as prototypes for discussion, design objectives for providing emotional first aid were collected. These objectives are demonstrated in a final concept called ’Huggle’.

’Huggle’ is a physical tool and service directly offered by, and integrated into the online dating platform. The product is a collection of self-compassion prompts in the form of colourful acrylic pills wrapped in mycelium coating. The prompts allow people to practice self-compassion after a negative event, accepting and observing their feelings instead of turning to self-criticism and withdrawal.

Using the concept as a research tool during two evaluation studies with users has shown that tangible interventions for emotional first aid need to follow the main principles of flexibility, unobtrusiveness (intimacy), and simplicity. Creating product meaning through personalization and sparking interest and curiosity might help to entice repeated use, aiding reflection and learning.

The findings of this project can give foundation to future work in the area of designing psychological interventions in the domains of emotional first aid, coping, and emotion regulation.

Due to an ever-changing and complex world we are living in, more than half (55%) of the average earners and more than 1 in 3 top earners worry about their finances (Aegon, 2021). Moreover, finan-cial stress is increasingly being recognized across society for its impact on happiness and productivity. Banking customers want to have ability to make confident, well-informed money related deci-sions resulting in financial security for both the short-and long-term, which has traditionally been covered by existing finan-cial services. However, other key wellbeing factors such as mean-ing and prolonging positive emotions are yet to be explored...

This project is an exploration of light as a supportive medium for meditation. Light is a mysterious phenomenon and the possibilities are endless, which required a broad exploration of various elements and applications of light. With a design driven approach this exploration took many forms. Ranging from finding inspiration, sketching ideas and building prototypes. 
However, to be able to steer the creative process towards a valuable end result a deep understanding about the experience, needs and requirements of the user had to be formed. This understanding grew over the course of the project by holding interviews and organising a generative session. Results from these activities resulted in a structured overview of how the meditation ritual someone could be supported. 
Research revealed that the user needs help in three areas, the creation of a routine, a formal practice of meditation and the relationship the user has with the ritual. The user is helped by shaping the routine, visualising this routine and by receiving notifications to show it is time to meditate. In terms of practice, the user is supported by getting into the mood of the meditation, through focus support (to avoid being lost in thought too much) and by having a transition between the meditation session and everyday life. Lastly the relationship the user has with the ritual is strengthened by creating a moment of clear awareness during the day. During this intervention the user is able to take a moment out of everyday life and reflect on its state of mind.
Based on the created structure the creative process could be channeled towards a product. With a focus on the interaction and aesthetics it was possible to find a balance between the functionality and appeal of the product. This resulted in Prana, your luminous meditation assistant. A dynamic and interactive wall lamp with a focus on guiding a user in his or her meditation journey. 
An evaluation of the product showed its potential to support a user through the meditation journey while providing an aesthetically pleasing experience that immerses you into the mysterious phenomenon of light. The simplicity of the product provides an intuitive interaction, while the complexity of the light effects take you into the moment.

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.

“It’s a given that parenting is hard work. But when you’re raising a child with special needs, the level of care and stress is not just higher, it shifts the foundations of families and adds unimaginable complexities for everyone involved.” (Pinhorn, 2018, www.gottman.com)This project is developed in collaboration with The Ontzorghuis, a Dutch organisation founded to support parents of children with special needs. This assignment aims to enhance the capabilities of the CSN parents’ community to fulfill their basic psychological needs, which are essential for psychological health and well-being (Decy & Ryan, 2008).Inspired by the Capability approach (Alkire & Deneulin, 2009; Sen, 2004; Nussbaum, 2001) a qualitative study was conducted to evaluate the common capabilities that characterise the CSN parents’ community, as well as the individual practices or paths of success that parents come up with to deal with their challenging circumstances. The study consisted of initial desk research based on the social media expression of CSN parents and remote field research that involved 6 CSN parents who participated in a series of generative research exercises and interviews. An innovative approach for remote user research is presented. It is based on metaphorical visualization exercises that are able to engage a sensitive community with little time available into a conversation about intimate and relevant topics that are often difficult to share.The findings collected from this research narrowed down the scope of this project into the topic of future thinking. Many parents experience fear and anxiety when facing the big unknown that supposes having a life-long dependent child. Their capability to think about the future appears as a decisive factor in their wellbeing. The proposed solution, Future Journeys tool, integrates the concept of Resourcefulness (Giaccardi & Nicenboim, 2018) into the context of future thinking. While the capabilities of this community are significantly reduced, the opposite may happen with their resourcefulness (ability to creatively adapt to challenges for which no commonly agreed solution was available). Future Journeys leverages the creative ways of approaching future thinking of some individuals to expand the perspective of relatable others who, although in similar circumstances, experience a negative relationship with the unknown future. The proposed tool is presented with the shape of a mobile phone application that aims to provide CSN parents with a common language to reflect and share their perspectives about future thinking. The solution promotes self-reflection through an exercise of guided metaphorical thinking and completes the experience with social interactions where the users share their perspectives to inspire others. This solution enhances the basic psychological needs of CSN parents. The impact of the tool on its users’ wellbeing was evaluated taking into account Self Determination Theory’s three fundamental needs. Furthermore, the results provided valuable insight into the potential of the tool to expand the capabilities of the CSN parents’ community and helped to draw further recommendations for the future development of the tool.

Happiness is something we, as humans, seek to attain yet we are not entirely familiar with what exactly it means. Typology of fundamental needs (Desmet & Fokkinga, 2020) explains comprehensively, yet detailed enough, the needs we must fulfil in order to be happy. An average person spends a third of their life at work (Pryce-Jones, 2010) and in that one-third of life, how those needs get fulfilled or harmed influences the happiness of an individual. Scholars of positive psychology argue that “positive states help people to thrive, mentally flourish and grow psychologically” (Frederickson, 2001). At the same time, happy people have been proven to be up to 20% more productive (Sgroi, 2015). Therefore, not only as a social responsibility should an organization put their focus on employee happiness but as an economic benefit as well. However, the vast science of happiness and the nature of the context (an organization) makes it an “open” or “wicked” challenge (Bijl-Brouwer et al., 2019). The challenge starts from analyzing happiness of employees within an organization, then introducing initiatives to improve happiness and finally, tracking the progress and effectiveness. However, the current scenario and limitations of happiness within organizations combined with the multi-faceted nature of happiness hints towards an even bigger challenge: achieving a happiness mindset.This project is an attempt to operationalize the typology of fundamental needs within the context of an organization in order to aid in achieving a happiness mindset. Borrowing knowledge from systems thinking and phenomenological hermeneutics, a theoretical framework is developed which is translated into a practical approach and tested on 4 different cases. The learnings and real life narratives obtained from this practical approach are utilized in developing the final outcome: “Ajar Process”. It is a 4 step process: Awareness, Alignment, Action and Acknowledgement. It starts with making the participants aware of the typology of fundamental needs, making them capable of sorting their real life experiences according to the need fulfillment. This awareness is then mutually aligned with all participating individuals, so that the perception of what happiness means in that context is similar for everyone. This prompts meaningful conversations leading everyone into a pro-active attitude, coming up with mutually decided initiatives to improve the happiness through need fulfillment. Eventually, the effectiveness of those initiatives is evaluated and a decision is made which step of the process to go to next. In this way, the process never ends and a repeated use results in a happiness mindset. Design concepts are proposed per step of the Ajar process which aid in executing that step effectively. Ajar process is presented as a service expansion for Emotion Studio (design agency) where they would offer to execute the first sprint of the process within the organization and hand it over to them for future executions.

A physical work environment is essential for creating and supporting different activities in the workplace, not only for work performance but also for physical and mental wellbeing. Studies have been conducted on the influence of the working environment on work performance and people’s wellbeing since the 1950s. Most of these studies have been published in the domains of ergonomics and human factors or in historical papers on the office environment (Katja, 2019). In recent years, motivated by increasing demand for wellness-focused design, companies and organizations are putting more effort into investing in properties that improve employee’s performance while enhancing their wellbeing in the workplace (Zack, 2019), exploring opportunities of new emerging technologies. The same applies to universities where they always seek for new approaches. Students are more willing to adapt to changes and to participate in experimental setups. Delft Design Labs offers multiple opportunities for student participation and master thesis project is one of them. Working on a graduation project is a challenging time and a graduation lab workplace should be an environment that can help. This project is focused on designing for the future Delft Design Labs workplace, which is being used by students who are working on their graduation projects for Delft Design Labs. The final design is a product system called "Hexabond" which encourages meaningful interactions between students, without disturbing everyone. It gives the user an opportunity to connect and interact with others, which can be a start point for students to get to know each other. The Hexabond is simple to set up and does not require a precious time investment. The aesthetic of the products is simple and minimalistic and makes it fit into any workplace. For validation of the Hexabond, some prototypes were created for user tests. The results of the test showed that the final design met the design goals well. The resulting product fulfills the need for encouraging students to offer and ask for help in the workplace, creating connections between students and making students feel a sense of belonging. However, there is still room for improvement for maintaining the connections between students. The biggest limitation during the project is the unfortunate pandemic. Making it impossible to do user tests in the DDL workplace or in general. The current design is still rather hypothetical and is not fully validated with the right usage. The product is rather a user-centered design that needs input and feedback from the user group. If it was possible to actually test the product in a shared workplace with the students, it would have yielded insightful feedback for iterations.