Introduction: Design for Health, Wellbeing and Happiness

Abstract

SIGWELL is the Design Research Society’s Special Interest Group which focuses on Design for Health, Wellbeing and Happiness. The SIGWELL community has an interest in advancing knowledge, and the development and application of design research in the broadest sense to improve the personal and societal health, wellbeing and happiness of people.

The remit of SIGWELL is wide-ranging; including the design of products, technologies, environments, services and experiences for health and wellbeing; developing understanding of how design impacts upon health, wellbeing and happiness (and other emotional states);and the development of new tools, methods and approaches for designing for health, wellbeing and happiness.

The SIGWELL themed sessions at DRS2016 are an important opportunity to showcase the latest thinking and research from the international design community on design for health, wellbeing and happiness. We see emerging trends in designing care and spaces for older people, designing for behavior change to tackle unhealthy eating behavior in children, and the design of new technologies in a medical context. The paradigm of moving care out of the hospital and into the home, and the role for design in this is also addressed.

Significantly, the body of work on subjective wellbeing - design for happiness, is increasing, and we see several examples of this – from the design of tools for designers, to designing happy experiences in the home, and even car interiors. Methods and approaches for design research in the area of health well-being and happiness featured in the SIGWELL sessions, are highly user-centric, participatory and sometimes critical and speculative. The distilling of this design knowledge into frameworks and tools for designers is a popular output of the research.