“Technology has the potential to increase the tonnage of human happiness on our planet.”
Most of today’s technology has been optimized for company growth and profit at the expense of people’s time, attention, and well-being. Many apps haven’t been designed to minimize the potential harm. Even fewer apps have been designed to meet people’s deeper psychological needs. And we have been suffering as a result.
Today there is a huge opportunity for tech creators. Positive Product Design is a method for creating positive technology that helps business be a force for good. With the help of positive psychology research, tech designers can develop technology that not only protects human vulnerabilities but also helps people realize their full potential.
Theories on what drives behavior have evolved significantly. Today, intrinsic motivation, agency, and personal choice are recognized as the healthiest forms of motivation, yet most tech motivates through punishment and reward. It's time to make a change.
Positive Product Design places tech creators at the forefront of the modern human potential movement that’s been building for centuries.
Early Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were among the first to inquire about what it means to live a good life.
Up until World War II, traditional psychology focused on psychological problems and how to remedy them. Sigmund Freud believed that the unconscious determines behavior and developed psychoanalysis based on this belief.
B.F. Skinner developed the theory of behaviorism based on the belief that free will was an illusion and that behavior could be controlled through positive and negative reinforcement.
Abraham Maslow was among the first to suggest that people were motivated by higher needs, like growth, self-actualization, and transcendence once their basic needs, like food and shelter, were met.
Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi evolved humanistic-based thinking into the science of positive psychology, turning it into concrete, evidence-based ways to thrive.
Scott Barry Kaufman, leading researcher on creativity, intelligence, and self-actualization fleshes out Maslow’s theory of self-actualization based on modern science. In Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, Kaufman reveals what it means to be self-actualized in the 21st century.
Courtney Bigony launches Positive Product Design, a new method for creating positive technology, and the Human Potential Index, the most complete measure of human potential, which she developed alongside Scott Barry Kaufman. Used together, they allow tech designers to measurably unlock human potential.
By combining the leveraged impact of technology with the latest science of thriving and human needs, Positive Product Design helps business be a force for good and create a world where every person has the opportunity to realize their full potential.
Selected as a 2021 World Changing Idea finalist
Using science to help humanity thrive