Designing for happiness through new trends

Being an architect and an interior designer, the idea of designing to generate an experience has been around me for almost 10 years, but it is not something that comes easy.

Understanding what are the emotions that a user is going to feel as they enter a space can be tricky and subject to many things. The thing that excited me the most of this course was the idea of being able to create a story, design a process, envision the experience and put it into “paper”.

In another blog I tried to explain what experience design is, not only for the people that want to learn more about design, but also for me. I know I am a slow learner, it takes a little longer for me to understand certain things and sometimes it comes easier for me to write things down to understand them better.

“When people feel happy, they take positive action. They make a purchase, they make a recommendation, they return.”

During one of the classes I saw a quote that I really liked “When people feel happy, they take positive action. They make a purchase, they make a recommendation, they return.” As a designer, the end of all should be to create something that makes people happy. We do need more positive actions in the world, we need more people that are happy to recommend the work of each other.

That was me being very happy eating ice cream and a crepe at Hobart before COVID

Trends and Happiness

One of the assessments talked about choosing an experience and using products, services, apps or events to create a solution for that experience. I chose exercising and the lack of motivation as an experience. The solution was to create or have something that would allow the user to remember or to feel the happiness they feel after finishing exercising, but feeling it before, to get that motivation back.

But there was another experience I wanted to discuss further, that experience is related to my interior designer side. The experience of entering a new home, a new room, a new restaurant and how this experience allows a person to feel happy.

Design is something that changes every day, trends are a huge part of design and allow us, as designers, to keep in touch with the changes design encounters day by day.

Trends can also be used to create experiences. A trend arises as a response to something. Two of the trends that I would like to explore to enable an experience and to make people feel happy are Grounded Style and Warm and Mature Colour Palettes:

Grounding Style

This trend appeared as a response to the chaotic world we live in. The need of using more natural elements and living in a more sustainable way with our environment. In other words, the experience we need to solve is our chaotic and overwhelming day to day life. This can be achieved by creating a space that allows the user to feel calm and more connected to the earth. People will feel happy and calm as soon as they enter their space with the use of raw and natural materials, neutral colour schemes and soft fabrics all around it.

Warm and Mature Colour Palettes

It is not a secret that colour allows people to feel a certain way. It is not the same to be in a bright blue room for hours than being in a white room. The emotions vary, the colour affects everything around and even the way the user perceives different elements can change depending on the colour used. For the past years, bright colours were used in different rooms to create emphasis, create a bold design and break from the neutral colour schemes. But this bright colours can make users feel anxious and not happy. That is the experience that wants to be changed. It can be done with the use of mature colour palettes that are inspired on nature. That will allow the user to feel more in touch with a soothing environment. A few pops of bright colours can appear to create an emotion now and then, but the most important, is to create muted colour palette that generates a soothing and happy feeling.

At the end of the day, I chose an experience that would allow me to get out of my comfort zone and being able to encounter different situations. As an interior designer and an architect, we get different clients who want different things. Being able to understand their needs and work with their desires to enable a determinate experience.