Organizing design-for-wellbeing projects

Design expertise is increasingly being applied to bring about positive social change and to promote people’s wellbeing. Relatively little, however, is known about ways to organize such design-for-wellbeing (DfW) projects appropriately. This paper sets out to explore this topic. First, we explore how DfW projects differ from ‘normal’ design projects.
We propose that DfW projects: aim to create opportunities for people to engage in meaningful and fulfilling activities, so that they can flourish; aim to improve external conditions and personal resources; and need to account for people’s diversity and promote flexibility and freedom. Second, we turn to the capability approach (CA), which focuses on making sure that people have all the relevant capabilities for a flourishing human life. The CA can help to organize DfW projects appropriately: to focus the project on empowerment, both as a means and as an end; to involve ‘users’ in the process of identifying selecting relevant capabilities and understanding contexts (cf. participatory design); to improve the involved organizations’capacities (cf. transformation design); and to account for diversity (cf. inclusive/universal design). We close the paper with suggestions for further research into individual and collective wellbeing, and into the changing roles of designers.
Relevance to design practice: We discuss ways to organize Design-for-Wellbeing projects appropriately, drawing from the Capability Approach, in order to find ways to create opportunities for people to engage in meaningful and fulfilling activities—that is, to flourish