Häppyy Inc.

Häppyy Inc. was a fictional design company, which produced happiness products. It was invented for the 3rd edition of the Digitale Welten youth festival, which took place at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt am Main in 2019. During the festival other artists and I explored the theme of happiness with young participants in 4-day workshops. My workshop started with a satirical question: what if happiness was a product? The imaginary enterprice, Häppyy Inc., provided the participants a framework to invent and design products that stimulated happiness. The happy products and the outcomes of the other workshops were shown in an exhibition at the end of the festival, and also at the Frankfurter Buchmesse.

In my previous life I used to work as a designer, so I like to occasionally return to design, in particular from the perspective of critical making. The idea of the Häppyy Inc. workshop was to go through a realistic product design process and thereby reflect on the relationship of consumerism and happiness. We started the workshop by watching advertisement videos, some of which were real, while others were parody. We discussed what was authentic/fake and what kind of rhetoric was used for smartphones, hi-definition flatscreens and other gadgets. After this we had a design thinking session, mapping what makes us happy and what kind of devices or products we could invent.

Next up was material exploration and sketching of initial concept designs. As materials we had plenty of recycled objects and some hardware store materials. Five product teams started prototyping their designs with hot glue, bringing their product concepts alive. Once we had the product-building going on, graphic designer Sebastian Pataki joined the workshop as an expert on visual identities. He gave us a lecture on this topic, addressing the aesthetics of exclusive and cheap products. Each team had also a chance to get advice from Sebastian regarding their product advertisement posters, which introduced each product in the final exhibition.

I was amazed of how dedicated the participants were to work out the details of their products, which included a mirror that takes you on an instant holiday, happiness-improving headphone and speaker set, a crowd-funded carbon dioxide vacuum cleaner, smart multi-purpose flashlight and a transport robot. In the end of the workshop we discussed our shared experience and how our view on consumer products might have changed. I hope that, at least for some participants, the workshop opened up new ways to read products and related advertisement, not as given, but as human-made.

See also:

• Photo album of Häppyy Inc.
• More photos from Digitale Welten