THE HAPPINESS MACHINE Happiness is not a solo endeavour it includes other people AND the city! A city can improve your happiness. The design of the public space will influence your feeling and behavior. Especially if it invites social interaction and play. Therefore, any decision made about the public space influences the general happiness of people in that space. Research has shown that general happiness has a positive influence on many social and economic factors in a city. How can you put happiness high on agenda of the municipalities? How do you know how happy your residents are? The HAPPINESS MACHINE is a platform with data and physical components. It uses open governmental data, social media and an app to determine how happy neighborhoods are. Plus it asks the residents how they feel by measuring their interactions with the physical space. For instance with push buttons installed at the local supermarket. Or through casual public games like public swings and playful interactive installations. These improve social interaction and gather data for the Happiness Machine. People can gather points through social events, doing volunteer work, and playing and interacting outside. At the end of the week the resulting Happiness Index per neighborhood will be projected on city hall! Which neighborhood is happier than it was last week? Which neighborhood puts most efforts in to make its residents happy? Create the best city competition ever!
Putting HAPPINESS on the agenda! Team: Paul Kemper, Gudule Martens, Robert Janssen - more info: phkemper@gmail.com