Master Thesis Project; Design Academy Eindhoven, 2014.
The Unhappiness Repairer from SilviaPillowNeretti on Vimeo.
Check the project video! and The Unhappiness Repairer website.
The Unhappiness Repairer is the methodology I developed for my social design masters’ thesis: an experiment that provides insight on how design and psychology can be combined in order to design happiness. The methodology development started with my bachelor thesis, which shows how to inscribe psychotherapeutic treatments into artefacts. I called them behavioural artefacts, whose aim was to heal bad habits. By inscribing in those artefacts the Paradox Theory by Watzlawick, through the Actor Network Theory by Latour, I delegated to their use the ability to make the user amplify the bad habit behaviour, in order to break the vicious circle consciously. The challenge of the Unhappiness Repairer is to inscribe into artefacts the agency of making the users perform a positive behavioural change within context perceived as adverse. I propose this shift as happiness. My research focuses on the relation between happiness, as knowing one’s own nature, needs and desires and surrounding context influences. My methodology aims to detach people from the influences of context perceived as adverse, by using behavioural artefacts that force users in performing different actions in the context and break their repetitive thinking pattern related to it. The artefacts help the users to understand the nature of the problem they were experiencing in the context, to develop personal strength and to stimulate alternative solutions. Every new artefact is a sabotage or modification of pre existing objects in the context (as silent viewers of our everyday life) created by observing the usual user’s behaviour in the context. By showing my first case study’s results, I will explain the meaning of designing happiness: to help people to develop the ability to detach from external influences and to focus on personal needs, through the use of designed behavioural artefacts that modify the interactions and perception of a context.
My new professional role and the practice I created is now named the “Unhappiness Repairer”.
I applied the methodology to my first client Ingrid Magilsen. She needed to find new goals in her life and change the delicate situation is in her home. We analized together her context, sabotaged her actual place, in order to force her think about a new space she would love to live in, newly.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Nice things happened:
Exibithions:
The Unhappiness Repairer project has been presented during the DDW 2014 (Graduation Show) and the Milano Design Week 2015 (Atelier Clerici, 5).
Awards and Nominee:
I received two nominations for Gijs Bakker Award and Keep an Eye on Talent Grant 2014.
I receive three honors for the Core77 Design Awards 2015, for the categories ‘Speculative Concepts’ as Runner Up and ‘Service Design’ as Notable and the Community Choice Award for ‘Speculative Concepts’.
I have been nominated for the prize ‘Wave of Tomorrow 2015’.
These are some reviews about the Unhappiness Repairer project:
Can You Design Happiness? by Shaunacy Ferro on fastcodesign.com
The Unhappiness Repairer: a PopUp Psychotherapy Office by Dijana Vukojevic;
The Unhappiness Repairer Experimenta, by Cristóbal Páez.
Redefining Design Design Beats, by Jan Boelen.
Progettare la felicità ChomeTemporary by Silvia Argentiero.
Publications:
Publication "Open Design for the Future" for the program Designers in Residence, 2015 Kortrijk.
© The Unhappiness Repairer is Silvia Neretti's Master thesis project developed and discussed in the year 2013-2014.
Materials and methodology are Silvia Neretti's propriety.
