Empathy-driven Design for Emotional Wellbeing

In this talk I will discuss how to design applications that can help people, and specifically older adults, improve their emotional wellbeing - or, in bold terms, happiness. Despite the obvious importance of the topic and the terrific impact this line of research can have for society, it is surprising how little progress has been made in the last decade, both in terms of research and in terms of products. In the talk I will first elaborate on why this is the case and exemplify the main flaws in the design thinking process that led to the current state of affairs. I will then discuss how to approach the design of applications for emotional wellbeing, stressing that the key is the need for every single designer and programmer to develop empathy with the people they are trying to help. I will then move on to discuss which are the main characteristics an application should possess, introduce some example applications and report on experiments, results, and findings in different contexts.