The Unhappiness Repairer
A new design practice that modifies everyday life objects function to help people change behaviors.
The Unhappiness Repairer is a project, PhD research and future practice that combine design, therapy and behavior change techniques for behavior and mental health care. Its aim is to explore the relation between everyday life objects and space and mental health: objects and spaces influence human behavior, therefore I aim to explore how objects can heal human behavior. Objects and space functions and affordances, whether responsible for it or not, let the users perpetrate behaviors (harming or not). The hypothesis is that by physically modifying the context through modification of objects functions, the user is forced to change his/her usual actions and behaviors. The user has to experience and perform his/her context differently, as a stranger would do, to build new actions and healthier behavioral patterns and choices in the context in which the mental or behavioral struggle started. The practice aim is to improve mental health and habits of users in already-existing places.