2.1 Well-being and design

The underlying assumption of ‘fast industrial design’ is that well-being is governed almost exclusively by having access to or posessing things, industrially manufactured goods. This is merely one view of well-being, but it is one to which designers have, generally, subscribed without question for the last 150 years. Design for Need, a short-lived phenomenon of the late 1960s to early 1970s did raise some awkward questions about the role of design in addressing well-being. In particular, Papanek (1972) identified five areas of human need – economic, psychological, spiritual, technical and intellectual – noting that designers found these needs ‘more difficult and less profitable to satisfy than the carefully engineered and manipulated wants inculcated by fad and fashion’.

Typologies of human needs offer fertile ground for fresh design thinking. Boyden (1971) examined mankind’s biological needs and distinguished between “survival needs” and “well-being needs”. Survival needs are focused on aspects of the environment that directly affect human health (clean air/water, absence of pathogens/toxins, opportunity for sleep/rest and so on). Failure to meet survival needs results in death or illness. Well-being needs are indirect impacts on health though their relationship to personal fulfillment, quality of life and psychological health. Failure to meet well-being needs results in psycho-social maladjustment and stress-related illnesses. It is perhaps better to perceive Boyden’s needs as requiring co-existence to meet our overall well-being. More detailed typologies include the oft-quoted needs hierachy of Maslow (Fig 4) that focused on the idea of developing human potential. Max-Neef’s Universal Human Needs (Fig. 5) and Jordan’s needs typology in relation to consumer products (Fig. 6) have received much less attention. Max-Neef also refers to existential needs - having, being, doing, and interacting. Existential needs provide fresh challenges for design and requires an holistic approach compared to that elicited by the dominant existential need of ‘having’, which is such a dominant feature of contemporary cultural production, consumption and its resultant materialism. Anthropocentric well-being requires thinking beyond the aesthetic, beyond form and function. Needs typologies challenge current design thinking.

Figure 4. Maslow’s needs hierarchy