Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the extent of psychological achievements regarding happiness in order to employ them through design interventions for promoting happiness in Iranian society. The study, therefore, includes two descriptive and experimental phases. The descriptive phase focuses on providing a snapshot of where positive psychology on defining happiness stands today. Accordingly, a model is presented to enable designers to merge soft functionalities into the design field, namely the elements of happiness via experience design. The next phase discusses the model and challenges facing the social context. The experimental phase revealed that positive psychological strategies for boosting happiness are not fruitful for the Iranian society, and raised three potential hypotheses for defining the causes of such a mismatch. Subsequently, a scenario is proposed through considering the experiment findings and reflective observation, which inspires and persuades Iranian users to break their routines and experience a new feeling resulting from subjective well-being strategies.