Igor's Computer Blog

*This post is a work in progress, in the madman/architect phase, if you'd like to help flesh it out, I'd love the help.  please add comments or ping me.* Why mortality software? To be satisfied we need to live in accordance with the person we want to be. Unless we know who we want to be, and act deliberately to achieve it, our satisfaction will be infrequent, and often accidental. Mortality software helps you understand who you want to be, and supports you in being that person. In a nutshell, making your satisfied. The first step for mortality software is helping you figure out the person you want to be and your values. Who do you want to be? What are your values? To figure out who you want to be, write your eulogy.  To make it easier, figure out the roles in your life. Imagine the person who would speak to each role of your life during your funeral.  What would you want each person to say?   That eulogy is the person you want to be. Now imagine how ...

Happiness is a coarse term, and often leads to cumbersome discussion and confusion. Martin Seligman provides a more granular model of happiness: pleasure, flow and satisfaction.   This model will be useful as we discuss positive computing.  Pleasure is the happiness of doing what feels good in the moment.  It's the happiness of consumption.  Eating, drinking, buying something.  Pleasure is easy to achieve, but the happiness is lost within minutes.  Flow is the happiness of being engrossed in a a challenging, enjoyable task.   It's the happiness of production. Making art,  baking cookies, working on a project.  Flow takes effort to get started, but the happiness last the length of the task, often lasting hours. Satisfaction is the happiness of  being the person you want to be.  It's the happiness of identity.  This happiness is deeply personal, for me it's being a deliberate person who can put a smile on a strange...

The positive computing book lays out a simple model for the approach your designs can be taking, I summarize it here: Approach Description Example None Happiness ignored Most applications today - no attempt to make users happy Passive (reactive) As issues are found which effect happiness, features are redesigned Comment systems allowing anonymous comments. As anonymous comments filled with negativity, comment systems evolved to allow enforcing a user identity, and to block "bad" users. [TBD: Get a better example] Active Augmenting existing features to make users happier Bing home page - displaying beautiful images that makes users happy. Deliberate The goal of the feature is user happiness exclusively Happify- a tool to train users ot be happier

This post is in progress to help me flesh out my progress -- feedback please!  TL;DR:  Moodles, abbreviated Mu, is a measure of in the moment  happiness" (InMoHap), which is extremely helpful when exploring positive computing.  The case for moodles.  The goal of positive computing is to make users happier, which means we need to measure happiness to tell if users are happier.   The current methods to measure happiness have limitations (details on request) , so we'll define a new ideal unit for in the moment happiness (InMoHap)  called the moodle, abbreviated Mu. The properties of the Mu is it can be objectively measured at any moment of time with minimal  user interruption.    For example, just as a fit bit can transparently count your steps through the day, a Moodle-O-Meter can measure your InMoHap throughout the day. Examples of using moodles.  To get a good understanding of InMoHap and moodles the following graphs show...

TL; DR: Positive Computing is understanding how computing can make normal people happier. Psychology started life as a science dedicated to helping people reduce mental illness.  Recently some psychologists wondered how their craft could help normal people be happier.  This new branch of psychology is called positive physiology. Similarly computing started life dedicated to making people be more productive.  Many early computer engineers expected the increase in productivity to increase happiness. But, while productivity soared, happiness remained flat.   Recently some computer engineers wondered how their craft could help normal people be happier.  This new branch of computing is called positive computing. Positive computing is a brand new field, and I look forward to investing in it heavily.  If you want to go deep into positive computing, there are some resources below: A  slide deck   on positive computing The  book on positive c...