WorldHappinessMeter and GCP

[Ron]

Roger and I had a lengthy discussion towards the end of summer about a project in which I've been involved and what the ramifications / synergy might be with GCP.  He suggested bringing it before this group, which I thought was a good idea.

WorldHappinessMeter.com is a web app for desktop and mobile that collects subjective mood reports and takes surveys.  The reports are time-stamped to within about a millisecond and geolocated.

The data collected is compared with the standard indexes of well-being which various organizations take from surveys every 2-3 years.  My interest is in seeing what spikes or dips might occur around events such as economic downturns, natural disasters, etc.  Does subjective happiness really go down after a disaster, or is there a spike of stress followed by relative well-being induced by community involvement and pulling together?  Extending Dean Radin's work in presentiment, might something akin to his findings also occur on a macro level as well as in the individual nervous system?

We are wondering about overlap between the World Happiness Meter and the GCP.  Will there be correlations in the data?  Is there interest in pursuing cross work between the two? 

[Peter Taylor-Newell]

I have really enjoyed checking http://www.wefeelfine.org/ over the years, perhaps there is some overlap.

Peter

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[Ron]

Do you mean overlap between WorldHappinessMeter.com and wefeelfine.org?  I would say in a broad way, yes, since they both collect happiness reports, but the aims are very different.  

WHM is optimized for mobile:  finger-friendly buttons, doesn't use Flash so it can be compatible with iPads & iPhones, highly accurate geolocation.  It aims to be super simple to use and ubiquitous so that lots of data is collected worldwide that can be consumed by other entities like the GCP.

WeFeelFine is a desktop web app that focuses on lots of alternative displays.

It would be interesting to stream WHM data into WeFeelFine to see what the graphical displays do.

Ron

[Audra Heye]

Hi Ron,

I love the idea but the bit that concerns me is that people have to 'remember' to use it. Even if they did remember—they use it everyday in the morning, its likely they'll always feel better than after a long day. I'd like to see it as an independent app somehow linked to calendars/clocks where it could pop up randomly to ask people how they feel at any given moment. Perhaps they could set their general daily pattern (eg get up at 6am go to bed at 9pm) and how often they don't mind being 'asked' (once a day/6 x a day). Additionally in that way age and gender would not need to be entered each time. Could it match the data against things such as public holidays or events in any particular area? It could also piggy back off something popular like Facebook as that's when people are less likely to be engaged in anything of importance and you're more likely to get responses.

Also wondering if more 'feelings' could be captured. For example someone could feel happy but still anxious. Its probably good to give the daily results as a 'reward' after entering data. I like the creativity and interactivity of wefeelfine (but I would...I'm a designer :) )

Just thoughts,

Audra

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[Ron]

Hi Audra,

Good ideas.  The more incentive there is for daily use, the better.  A Facebook app to interface to the WorldHappinessMeter.com site is actually already planned, though that data may be flagged as less reliable since FB users tend to be artificially cheery.  Still, the connections with other FB users is another level of data that's interesting for research.  ( See this TED talk on network effects on happiness, by one of the authors of the Harvard study that us referenced at WorldHappinessMeter)..

The wefeelfine.org graphics are not compatible with mobile devices (the site uses the Flash computer language, which Apple doesn't support), and the WHM is targeted especially toward mobile devices, with simple graphics and few mouse clicks necessary.

But I digress.  The reason I've posted is 

a) to gauge the GCP's interest in consuming WHM's global data.   Publicly-declared interest by IONS/GCP in the WorldHappinessMeter would go a long way in gathering the alliances needed to further this project and get meaningful data.

b) gather ideas (such as the ones you've contributed) for incentivizing daily use of WHM. 

Ron