Mood-Focused Design
An Integrative Exploration
Z. Peng (TU Delft - Form and Experience)
P.M.A. Desmet – Promotor (TU Delft - Form and Experience)
L.A.G. Kolks – Copromotor (TU Delft - Form and Experience)
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Abstract
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.