Design your happiness today
We are a company looking to optimize the world for happiness using the latest design techniques. We build products and services that support individuals to make changes that will improve their happiness, and help organizations and governments to put in place systems that will improve the happiness of their employees, partners, customers, and citizens. Our name, Masamichi Souzou (正道想像), means "Correct Path, Imagined/Created" in Japanese, and we are deeply committed to building a world optimized for happiness.
We believe happiness is the ultimate design intent. In reality almost all activities we undertake are begun because we believe we will be better off or happier through their attainment.
The problem is that most of societies activities are not motivated direct by a desire to improve our happiness, but rather focus on other outcomes, like the optimisation or profit, or efficiencies.
And when theses secondary aims are achieved, we are no happier, and infact much of the society we have built through these optimizations are infact antithetical to our happiness.
This evolved chemical sensation that indicates when our needs in terms of survival have been met, can be better understood and supported in individual, organizational, and civic contexts.
We have been on the front lines of designing products and services for some of the worlds top companies for the past 15 years. We have deep experience with the skillset that drives much of the creativity and innovation around the products and services that define our world today.
We take the same design toolkit (Design Thinking, Service Design, UX/UI Design, Systems Thinking, etc.) that we refined and mastered in various corporate settings, and apply it to the challenges individuals, organisations, and civic bodies face for the optimization of their happiness.
We want to help support small towns and cities optimize for the happiness of their citizens.
We've developed the Version 1.0 of our Civic Happiness Toolkit, and having tested our process with a first partner city. We are now looking to expand the effort, further developing a next version of the toolkit for wider public release, and engage additional small towns and cities in the designing for happiness process.
Initial support will allow us to:
_ Develop an updated version of our Civic Happiness Toolkit.
_ Distribute our Civic Happiness Toolkit, making it widely available for small towns and cities across the US & UK.
_ Host monthly virtual free talks that explain and demonstrate the value of the approach to small towns and cities.
_ Host a series of monthly training workshops to empower elected officials, administrators, volunteers, and other people working in small towns and cities to take the first steps in designing happiness in their own context.
_ Run several subsidised demonstration projects with select small towns and cities to develop and document case studies and build additional interest in the approach.
_ Follow-up over time, and measure the impact of our interventions in the small town and city context.
These approaches completely reframe, reprioritize, and reenergizes efforts in solving a myriad of personal, organzational, and social problems.
We have experienced first hand the impact on the life of the individual when use design methods to solve for happiness.
And we've explored our approach with our first test city, having an important impact on the focus of health and wellbeing in a rural city setting and helping to accelerate their access efforts.
Our Happiness Development fund allows you to donate directly to activities working to improve the world's happiness.
Your donation support efforts to further develop approaches for happiness optimization, at the personal, organizational, and civic levels. Your support funds a global wave of work looking to explore, understand, and create a world that better supports human happiness. This donation to the Happiness Development Fund helps place Masamichi Souzou in a position to deploy new methodologies, products, and services that create new value and directly increase the world’s happiness.
Find a donation level that is comfortable for your current financial situation and does not interfere with your basic needs. If you earn less than $90,000 a year, we suggest donating no more than $100 dollars per year or $10/month to the HDF.
You'll receive a certificate of donation, be mentioned on our donor list (Anonymously if you prefer), and be kept up-to-date on our work and progress and future opportunities ahead.
*This is a donation with no tax benefits for the donor, as MMSZ is not a charity. (We purposely do this to avoid taking tax revenue away from democratic programs and services that may support critical basic civic infrastructure and life.)
Our team has run hundreds of design projects, with some of the biggest and most celebrated companies in the world, we have deep experience in the healthcare delivery space, and we believe this simple yet radical new approach to happiness can begin to create major change in the entities that experience it.
Every part of our organization has been created in line with our mission and goals, and designed for happiness. From our 4-day work week, to our Minimum Happiness Salary, to our Personal Happiness Behavior support, and our operating and funding model, we are serious about designing every part of the world for happiness.
J. Paul is a designer & researcher based in London with expertise in service design & speculative design, and extensive healthcare experience. He has worked at the Mayo Clinic in the Center for Innovation on patient experience and care delivery models, and teaches at the Royal College of Art in London on Service Design. He has been actively exploring approaches for the optimization of happiness for the past 12 years.
Elliott is a strategist & designer working in San Francisco. He has degrees in Sociology and Health Administration, and a variety of experiences working in health and across healthcare organizations such as Cleveland Clinic and Sutter Health. Elliott is intensely interested in how technology is changing the way we design services and products for health and happiness.
Nuzi is an experienced healthcare UX designer and product strategist based in Los Angeles, and holds an MRes in Healthcare & Design from the Royal College of Art (Imperial College + Helix Center). Nuzi is facinated by how our designed world impacts our happiness and well-being. She guides Masamichi Souzou on our product development.
We consider everything. Everything in the world is connected together in very complex ways, and nothing falls outside of our purview
We seek the greatest number of people to experience the greatest possible happiness over the longest period of time
We look to understand and take responsibility for the TOTAL impact of all of our actions in the world, no matter the degrees of separation
Break the mold, pioneer a new path, try something radical, trailblaze. The world deserves new ways of thinking and approaching problems and solutions around happiness. Be a part of the next wave by supporting the Happiness Development Fund, a radical new way to explore the possibilities ahead.
