Designing Services for Human Flourishing

Abstract

Although technological development has provided humankind many notable progressions in how they live, work, or communicate, sometimes the design of the technology fails to take human well-being into account, and thus impairs it. These deficiencies often occur after the technology has been taken to use, which is why instead of criticizing it afterwards, the ethical discussions have been tried to be included in the design phase of the technology. This way technology could be designed more ethically, resulting in better social impact when it emerges to society.

This thesis proposes a technological design model for creating services that increase people’s well-being and possibilities for flourishing. Human flourishing describes the state of thriving on multiple areas of life. To form the Design For Flourishing (DFF) model, a review to relevant literature and a case study were made.

The literature review consists of three chapters. The first chapter inspects the methods and terminology of ethical technology design. It introduces the most reviewed approach, Value Sensitive Design, which is later used as the basis for including human flourishing related values in service design process. The second chapter introduces two distinct concepts of happiness, hedonia and eudaimonia, to have an idea of what people think of happiness or a good life. It also researches the effects of the elements of well-being theory called PERMA model, and complements it with other theories, such as the Broaden-and-build model of positive emotions, concept of Flow, and Self-Determination Theory. The second chapter concludes by defining flourishing based on the findings on happiness and well-being.

The third chapter introduces the terminology of service design and combines the findings of the earlier chapters and the case study to form the DFF model. DFF is ultimately a design frame-work that uses Value Sensitive Design’s ethical investigations to find the essential values in the design context to examine whether they support human flourishing or not. The third chapter introduces the philosophy of DFF and presents a practical methodology to design for flourishing.

The case study was conducted as a real-life service design project in the industry. It aimed to see what sort of possibilities or benefits the service design process would have, if positive emotions and meaningfulness were emphasized throughout it. The case study consisted of a stake-holder analysis, narrative interviews, a co-design workshop, and continued to the design and development based on those. The result of the project was a crowdfunding web service for elderly people’s wishes.

The observations from the service design process, such as how storytelling benefitted interview results, how focusing on positive emotions resulted in positive outcomes, and how values in the design context were held on to, inspired the methodology of DFF. There are some inconsistencies between the case study and the literature review, because the case study was conducted before reviewing the literature: for example, the case does not concern all the PERMA elements, which were supposed to support flourishing. The study also created further ideas on how designers and service providers could have this sort of approach in their work contexts, which are discussed in the final chapter.

The DFF model is meant to help designers or developers create technology that creates well-being for its users or other stakeholders. Service provider companies can use the DFF model to create new business opportunities and propositions, and to have projects in which the people involved in them increase their possibilities for flourishing.