Hi Toon,

Emotion, especially happiness, is such an important factor in design
activity that one could expect the design research field to be at the
cutting-edge of understanding of changes in how emotions might be perceived.
It's getting there but doesn't seem to be the case....yet.

It seems useful to remember that the usual ideas of emotions - the concepts
and their associated names (happiness, sadness, etc) - are inventions,
just theoretical concepts. They are not real. The theory concepts named
'happiness', 'sadness' etc were invented long ago at a time before humans
had much understanding of what went on inside themselves. They got used for
so long that we started to believe the concepts were reality.

As designers, it seems useful to remind ourselves that concepts of
happiness, sadness, satisfaction sorrow etc are theoretical constructs -
only theoretical constructs. Reality is different. What happens inside of
ourselves and our perceptions of those changes is a different sort of thing
to a theoretical construct. We do not feel 'sorrow' - we perceive changes in
ourselves that our education and culture has taught us to label 'sorrow' -
often more because of our situation rather than the changes inside us.

Culture and education has also taught us to associate the label 'sorrow'
(or 'happiness') with other behaviours tied to the theoretical construct
that we impose on ourselves in addition to the changes in ourselves that we
first labelled 'sorrow'. The same is true for all other theoretical emotion
constructs such as happiness etc. Significantly, these are most commonly
subconscious behaviours and we misperceive them. The result is we are
missing the awareness of the details of the reality of this situation that
are important in design research and theorymaking about design.

Standing back, there appear to be a bunch of problems for design research
that we have been conditioned to see and behave in this way about emotion.
It results in weakness in research and theory in any field when any
theoretical construct is assumed to be reality: an ontological and
epistemological error. Theory built on such a error usually is badly
compromised.

The last 20 years has seen literature about emotion showing greater
awareness and understanding of the difference between 'human internal
changes and self-perception of such changes' and 'seeing those changes in
terms of theoretical constructs of happiness/sadness etc'. Awareness of
this fundamental difference appears to help reveal and illustrate the gap
between the reality of how we respond and what we feel , and theorising
about it. A Google search of "happiness construct" shows some of the
awareness of the difference.

Understanding this gap is also useful in many ways for more accurately
understanding and theorising about design activity and user activity - and
producing better designs. Currently, lack of fundamental critical attention
to understanding how self-perception of emotion has been illusorily created
by an educationally/culturally conditioned suite of theoretical constructs
(happiness, sadness etc) is a potentially serious weakness in the design
field. The intensity and depth of our conditioning, however, has been such
that most designers and design researchers regard these theoretical
constructs as being the reality of what happens inside of themselves. This
lack of attention to the difference between theory concepts and reality has
delayed the improvement in quality of theory-building in design research as
it relates to the interactions between designed outcomes and changes inside
ourselves.

As an aside, an insightful (and fun) exploration of the theoretical
construct of happiness was undertaken in the early 90s by Richard Bentall of
Liverpool University in the UK. This review of happiness as a concept was
significant enough to be published in the archives of NIH. The article can
be found at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1376114/pdf/jmedeth00282-0040.pd
f It was originally published in the Journal of Medical Ethics

Best wishes,
Terry
===
Dr Terence Love FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Social Program Evaluation Research Unit
School of Psychology and Social Science
Edith Cowan University
Joondalup, Western Australia 6027
[log in to unmask]
mob:0434 975 848
===
 
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of toon
Sent: Monday, 4 July 2011 3:33 PM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Design, happiness, (motivation and ethics)

Hi all,

I would like to get some reading suggestions
on happiness and design. Maybe even
implications this has for motivation and
or ethics.

Thanks
Toon