On August 15, 2022, MDTL gave a guest lecture at CuriousU, International Summer School in Europe, organized by Design Lab of University of Twente, the Netherlands.
The lecture was part of “Design the Future” and “Health & Happiness” tracks in which 30 students from design and psychology participated.

Abstract

With the emerging realization of the contribution of design-mediated positive emotions to well-being, evoking positive emotions became explicit design objectives. However, experiencing positive emotions does not necessarily lead to increased well-being effectively. Studies show that a few intense positive emotions can be ineffective in improving well-being. People quickly become accustomed to the pleasure, eventually finding it mundane. At worst, some positive emotions can engender deconstructive behaviors such as over-engagement on social media. Thus, a question emerges: how can products be designed to enhance and extend positivity in a well-being enhancing way? This CuriousU guest lecture addresses the design contribution to positive experiences, especially focusing on design-mediated Positive Emotion Regulation (PER). Students will learn theoretical and empirical aspects of PER and their relevance to design practice. Through a combination of lecture and hands-on exercise, the students will gain an overview of diverse ways of enabling users to up-regulate their positive emotions, and discuss how the overview can be used to identify design opportunities with users’ well-being in mind.