Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
Elements of design <strong>for</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong><br />
After a year’s work, we should be in a position to define design <strong>for</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong>,<br />
but un<strong>for</strong>tunately a definition is neither easy to find nor self-evident.<br />
In this case, as in many others, going deeper reveals more questions than<br />
answers.<br />
Addressing <strong>wellbeing</strong> through design means that the narrow disciplinary<br />
conception of design being about making objects beautiful is no<br />
longer enough; it must be replaced with a more inclusive understanding.<br />
When we design <strong>for</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong> we pay attention to improving intangible<br />
objects such as digital interfaces, internet and face-to-face services and<br />
urban development. We must also design critically, underlining topics<br />
that require further discussion. Traditional three-dimensional and graphic<br />
design obviously have a place in this more inclusive definition of design<br />
too. Design <strong>for</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong> requires that design is seen as a broad umbrella<br />
of activities that identify issues in systems and find technical solutions and<br />
practices that can and should be improved <strong>for</strong> the betterment of human<br />
life. It can also point the way towards better solutions. Accepting a broad<br />
definition of design like this has consequences, the most obvious being<br />
that the disciplinary borders within design need to be crossed and that<br />
design requires and includes a lot of work not often identified as design.<br />
However, to be able to understand the broadening concept of design as a<br />
unique activity that is different from any other type of planning, something<br />
needs to be said about its specific nature.<br />
Design, and indeed design <strong>for</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong>, is an integrative and fundamentally<br />
cross-disciplinary practice that operates in a complex environment<br />
of different and in many cases conflicting values, methods, occupational<br />
roles and responsibilities, historical legacies both positive and negative, and<br />
societal <strong>for</strong>ums and practices. To understand design, it needs to be seen as a<br />
practice that encompasses art, craft, innovation and research. First, design<br />
inherits the artistic aspirations of creating aesthetical experiences, it relies<br />
on individual creativity and subscribes to the practice of exhibiting results<br />
9 · Design, <strong>wellbeing</strong> and design <strong>for</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong>