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1. So, Paul, why did you make the app?
Many of those who read Happiness by Design asked me to make it. Also, feedback is crucial to knowing how the choices we make affect our happiness. A great deal of research shows that we are not very good at predicting or remembering how we feel. We are poor witnesses to our own happiness. So, to become happier we need to get a better sense of how what we do, who we are with and what we think about affects how we feel. Then we can set about designing environments to make it easier to do the things that feel good.
2. What sort of insights does the app offer about happiness?
It is early days but I can give a couple of examples provided by app users themselves. These are things that the app drew attention to that would have otherwise been neglected. First, a user commented she enjoys talking to strangers much more than anyone else – and much more than she thought that she would. She lives in London, and people don’t talk to strangers very often here. So, this was interesting to hear. Another is from the mother of a baby who is about one month old. She said that spending time with her child doesn’t make her feel very happy but it is the most worthwhile thing that she spends her time doing. This is really important because if she were only to have measured her ‘pleasure’ or happiness, her child wouldn’t have had much of an impact on how she reported feeling. But because the app measures ‘purpose’ by asking about worthwhileness, too, spending time with her new baby does contribute to her happiness. This is the problem with most of the other mood trackers out there – they neglect the purpose component of happiness.
3. How does the app measure ‘happiness’?
It simply asks people how happy they feel and how worthwhile what they were doing felt. People also record what they were doing, who they were with and what they were thinking about. These are the main predictors of experiences of happiness in the moment. Measuring both happiness and worthwhileness is consistent with the ‘Pleasure-Purpose’ principle I discuss in Happiness by Design. Some activities usually bring people more pleasure (‘happiness), such as watching TV, and others bring more purpose (‘worthwhileness’), such as taking care of children or going to work. We need a balance of both to be happy. And we need to focus much more on our experiences of happiness than we do currently.
4. Why is it important to focus on people’s experiences of happiness?
Much of the happiness literature to date – and what we know about happiness – is based on asking people vague questions such as, “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life?” This question asks people to think about what they think makes them happy rather than what actually does as they go about their lives. We should be measuring happiness as the flow of pleasure and purpose over time and this app does that. I’ve told this story many times, but I will tell it again to illustrate why it is important to focus on experiences of happiness. One week I went out to dinner with a friend, and she spent the time complaining about her job – her boss, colleagues and commute. But at the end of dinner, and without any irony, she said, “Of course, I love working at MediaLand.” There is no real contradiction there. She is evaluating her life in one way and experiencing it in another way. But I think that we need to prioritise what actually feels good, rather than what we think should. And I hope that the app can help people to do this, as well as contribute to our scientific understanding of what does and does not bring people pleasure and purpose in their everyday lives.
5. Can I use the app?
Yes please. We’re in the first launch phase, and as of writing this, there are still around 2K free downloads left. We really appreciate feedback at this stage. I do ask that you take a survey first to help us better understand what makes people happy, and then we can send you a link to download the app. Here’s the survey link
