Consilence and Innovation in Design - Proceedings and Program
5th IASDR 2013 TOKYO
5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research

Study on factors that affecting Well-being
For the future design promotion
Yusuke ASHIZAWA*, Ayaki SAKUMA**, Kenta ONO**, Makoto WATANABE*** Japan Institute of Design Promotion, ashizawa@jidp.or.jp** Chiba University
Abstract: Designers' activity has gradually expanded with changes in society, and now especially inadvanced countries face the problem of “Easterlin Paradox” is the paradox that higher income does
not always contribute to making Well-being. We have employed GDP as index for well-being since
1950s after Kuznets proposed it, but now a lot of countries have tried to make a new index
complementary with GDP. Thus, we should not focus only physical welfare but factors that making
up Well-being, and it is also same for designers. In this study, we conducted web research on thehypothesis that happiness level is proportional to the amount of community activities and questions
regarding happiness level, total time of community activities with: family, workplace, friends, andso on: about 524 men and women from 20’s to 60’s as a preliminary survey, about 1,075 men andwomen from 20’s to 60’s as a main survey. As a result, we found relationship between happinesslevel and total time of activities with family, but other activities have not strong relationship withhappiness level. However we found the question that “Do you have some kind of rewarding?” hasstrong relationship with happiness level.
Key words: Well-being Indicators, Design Promotion, Happiness, Community Activities

1. Introduction
Designers' activity has gradually expanded with changes in society. At one time, product designer had mainly
designed only tangible objects, but now they also design intangible matter as a service, and also environmental
designer have focused on not only environment but activity itself as a community development. It seems like they
begun to change their focus into motivation. In other words, designer has started to consider not only humanbehavior as issue but motive behind their behavior as fact.
Meanwhile similar changes have occurred in the economic policies field. A lot of countries in the world haveadopted GDP as an indicator of their growth and it has treated as indicators of well-being. It is based on theconcept that an increase of national income bring citizens into well-being, but from around 1990, some ofadvanced countries have faced“Easterlin Paradox [1]” that subjective sense of well-being decrease in spite of anincrease of their income. Since then, researches of the new index called as "happiness equation [2]" to covers theshortcomings of GDP become an active especially in Japan. Considering these and getting back to design
perspective, the essence of design is to make user's happiness, and now designer has begun to focus on motivation,
the matter designer now facing is quite similar with topics that researchers that focus on "happiness equation".
Therefore, to establish principles of design, especially to prevent their design from falling into paradoxes ofhappiness, we study factors that effects well-being especially focus on human activities.

12736
2723
2733
2746
2745

Consilence and Innovation in Design - Proceedings and Program
5th IASDR 2013 TOKYO
5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research

2. Hypothesis about factors that affecting Well-being
2.1 Bibliographic Survey
At first, we have established working group to discuss the hypothesis about factors that affecting Well-being,
comprised of 5 people who are interested in this study: including students, working people; and we conductedbibliographic survey mainly focus on the survey of Japanese Cabinet. On a basis of those, we discussed factorsthat highly affecting Well-being, and we tried to construct the hypothesis. As a result, we made 3 hypotheses:
condition of some kind of relationship will affect significantly Well-being, “Socio-economic Condition” and“Health” those are main factors Japanese Cabinet proposed [3] will also have some influence on Well-being, andlevel of Well-being will change whether they have some kind of goals. Besides, we found there is a concern thatweb survey itself will cause some biases because we can carry out a survey particular people who have physicalwelfare as that they can access internet.

2.2 Preliminary Survey
On a basis of above, we made questionnaire as a preliminary survey and carried out to 524 men and womenfrom 20’s to 60’s. On this survey, we made question items as below Table 1 for verifying hypothesizes in addition
to a question about Well-being.
Table 1. Question items in a preliminary survey
No
1

Intention
Detailed questions about
Relationship

2

Questions related withJapanese Cabinet proposed3

Questions about goals

4

Questions to survey biases of
the word “Well-being”

Details and Question Items
Relationship with “Family living together,” “Family live separately,”“Colleague,” ” Lover or Spouse,” “Friend,” “Neighborhood”“Health condition of mine,” “Health condition of family,” “Annualincome,” “Personal disposable income,” “Satisfaction with income,”“Degree of difficulty in living”“Presence of hopes or dreams, and details if there are,” “Presence of what
you want to do, and details if there are”
“Question about Ill-being as opposite of Well-being,” “The mostimportant factor for you to be Well-being,” “The most important factor
for you to prevent Ill-being”

Figure.1 Comparison with the result of Cabinet

22737
2724
2734
2747
2746

Consilence and Innovation in Design - Proceedings and Program
5th IASDR 2013 TOKYO
5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research

Figure.2 Relationship between the score of Well-being and the result of scoring relationshipAs a result of this survey, first we found no significant difference could be seen with response of Well-being incomparison with the result of Cabinet [4], and we found there is an insignificant bias and there is no need toconcern a bias with web survey (Figure 1). Besides, as a peculiar feature of web survey, there are a lot ofhousewives in this survey (129 samples / 24.6%), and as a result of t-test between housewives and others, nosignificant difference could be seen. Regarding items about relationship, there are quite few samples whoanswered “I have poor relationship,” and it would be difficult to analyze the statistical tendency, but the result of
scoring responses that the better is higher score the worse is lower, we got a graph that we can find correlated withWell-being. Therefore, we convert the result of responses about Well-being into two values that “Being Happy”
and “Being Unhappy,” and we performed discriminant analysis. As a result of it, canonical correlation coefficientis even 0.393 is not high, but we found we can be classified those in linear classification. However, in the test of
an assay of the statistical differences among groups, there is no significant difference only in “Relationship withColleague,” and we can predict that “Relationship with Colleague” have little effect on Well-being. Besides, in theitems that are related with Cabinet proposed, we could not find items that significantly correlate with Well-being
in the items related with the Cabinet proposed. However, the item “Satisfaction with income” only has highcorrelativity the score of coefficient of correlation was 0.415, but contribution ratio is 0.253 is not high, and we
can be seen that it possess lower reliability. Thus, “Satisfaction with income” has a little possibility that affectWell-being, and it is not definitively having strong implications.
Regarding the item about goals, we performed the non-parametric test because the answer has two values. As aresult of it, there is a significantly different between the group that has “presence of Goals” and the group that has“absence of Goals” in two-sided 95% confidence interval. Besides, we found that biases of the word “Well-being”
is not so much. As a result, we found we should look at “the presence of Goals.” Hence, we shared this withworking group, and we modified the hypothesis toward the main survey. In consequence, we got the supposition
as below Table 2.

32738
2725
2735
2748
2747

Consilence and Innovation in Design - Proceedings and Program
5th IASDR 2013 TOKYO
5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research

Table 2. The supposition from the result of Preliminary Survey
No
1

Intention
Quantitative scale aboutrelationship between Wellbeing and relationship2

The presence of Goals

3

Questions to survey biases ofthe word “Well-being”

Supposition
We can monitor it by measuring the amount of activity time.
According to preliminary survey, we found the samples that have goals
about contribution to someone had higher score than the samples thathave goals about self-realization. Accordingly, we can monitor thedifference by measuring the difference between “the presence ofRewarding” and “the presence of Objectives.”
There is no difference between Well-being and Ill-being, but there will besome difference between Well-being and "Subjective Life Satisfaction,""Subjective Life Fulfillment."

2.3 Main Survey
On a basis of above, we made questionnaire as a main survey and carried out to 1075 men and women from20’s to 60’s. Regarding the items about relationship, we made questionnaire about “Family,” “Colleague,”“Friend,” “Group activities,” “Group activities on the WEB,” “Neighborhood,” and we got answers about theamount of activity time by self-enumeration.
Based on the results of main survey, we performed discriminant analysis with the items about relationship andWell-being. As a result of it, the first parameter of canonical correlation coefficient about “The amount activity
time with Family” was high that point 0.679 and next was “The amount activity time with Friend” that point 0.433
and the worst was “The amount activity time with Group on the WEB.” However, canonical correlation
coefficient of first parameter was 0.325 that is low, and it means there is not significant influence, and thus, those
3 items have a certain effect on Well-being, but that is not significant. In addition, regarding biases of the wordWell-being, we performed correlation analysis between Well-being and "Subjective Life Satisfaction," "SubjectiveLife Fulfillment." As a result of it, the former is 0.713 and the latter is 0.773. The both results indicate there is noFigure.3 Relationship between the score of Well-being and the result of scoring the amount of activity time

42739
2726
2736
2749
2748

Consilence and Innovation in Design - Proceedings and Program
5th IASDR 2013 TOKYO
5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research

Figure.4 Comparison of Objectives with Rewarding
difference if we change into those words instead of Well-being. On the other hand, regarding “the presence ofRewarding” and “the presence of Objectives,” we performed the non-parametric test. As a result of both, we founda significant difference in two-sided 99% confidence interval, and that is higher than the presence of Goals. Thatmeans those have higher influence with Well-being. Besides, regarding comparison of those, the first, regarding
Rewarding, the average score of Well-being with presence of rewarding is 7.00 and absence of rewarding is 5.76.
The second, regarding Objectives, the average score of Well-being with presence of objective is 6.83 and absenceof objective is 5.97. As a result of comparison of average difference, we can presume “the presence of Rewarding”
has higher influence than “the presence of Objectives.”

3. Conclusions
Consequently, regarding the first hypothesis, we found that the amount activity time with Family is the mostcontributing factor, and the next is the amount activity time with Friend. Conversely, we found that the amountactivity time with Group activities on the WEB is the worst contributing. However influence rate of those is nothigh and it means there is not significant influence.
In contrast, we found that “the presence of Rewarding” and “the presence of Objectives” have high influenceon Well-being. Especially, the presence of Rewarding is higher than the presence of Objectives, and we shouldlook at details about “Rewarding” in the future. However, in this survey, the samples that answer Ill-being arequite few and there are slight doubts about whether these surveys have enough believability. Therefore, we should
be continued this research.

4. References[1] Richard A. Easterlin, M. A. (1974) Does Economic Growth Improve the Human lot? Some Empirical Evidence,in P.A. Davis & W.R Melvin, eds., Nations and Households in Economic Growth, Stanford University Press,
pp. 98-125.
[2] Nick Powdthavee (2011) The Happiness Equation: The Surprising Economics of Our Most Valuable Asset,
Icon Books, UK

52740
2727
2737
2750
2749

Consilence and Innovation in Design - Proceedings and Program
5th IASDR 2013 TOKYO
5th International Congress of International Association of Societies of Design Research[3] The Commission on Measuring Well-being, Japan (2011) Measuring National Well-Being -Proposed Wellbeing Indicators- [Online PDF]. Available at <http://www5.cao.go.jp/keizai2/koufukudo/pdf/koufukudosian_english.pdf> [Accessed 5 December 2011][4] Cabinet Office, Government of Japan (2012) National Survey of Lifestyle Preferences 2011- [Online PDF].
Available at < http://www5.cao.go.jp/seikatsu/senkoudo/h23/23senkou_02.pdf> [Accessed 22 June 2012]

62741
2728
2738
2751
2750