Design to Leverage Character Strengths
A great design is something that deeply resonates, energizes and even enlights you. Often the most powerful designs are found in our personal artifacts, family heirlooms and sacred spaces. Such designs deeply reflect not only who we are but the best that we can hope to be. They work because they reflect our character strengths.
Designs that leverage our character strengths will naturally have high cognitive impact. I see myself, I see the best of myself, I see what I have worked hard to become all reflected in the features, functions, interaction and experience that the designer provides. This is especially important when you are designing for behavior change.
A good tool for understanding character strength (for design purposes) is the VIA classification of character strengths. It includes five core elements – wisdom & knowledge, courage, humanity, justice, temperance and transcendence. It does not take much work to figure out which dominate the psychographic profile of the people you are designing for. The neat thing about the VIA classification is it goes beyond values to include cognition and mental states in the characterization. For example,
“Humanity - Interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others
- Capacity to Love and Be Loved: Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing and caring are reciprocated; being close to people
- Kindness [generosity, nurturance, care, compassion, altruistic love, "niceness"]: Doing favors and good deeds for others; helping them; taking care of them
- Social Intelligence [emotional intelligence, personal intelligence]: Being aware of the motives and feelings of other people and oneself; knowing what to do to fit into different social situations; knowing what makes other people tick”
This provides plenty of hooks for the cognitive designer interested in tuning features and functions to invoke and think-and-feel of “humanity”.
Check out the website, VA institute on Character, for additional background and tools. A potential goldmine for cognitive designers interested in designing to leverage character strengths.
