Monday, July 23, 2012

Where is all the happiness in this world?

Past 3 months in Bangalore I been travelling a lot by local public transport. Bus number 201 takes me to my destination daily. Rarely I get a place to sit in the bus, but what I do get is 45 mins to think about the things around me. For past about one week I been trying to see how many people are smiling while they travel or even while they wait for bus. The subjects also include the people outside the bus in their own vehicle. Before we go further, lets understand this experiment.

How can one tell if someone is happy without even talking to them. So I assume if someone is smiling they must be happy. So I start looking for smiling people on street. What I saw was bit alarming. I get to see maximum of 2 people who are smiling amongst hundreds of people I get to see. I am not sure why the number is so low but then if someone else is doing similar experiment and happens to see me, even I wont be smiling. Is the reason for this the environment we live in and the kind of effect it has? I remember people in Pune much happier and smiling than those in Bangalore. Is it something to do with the atmosphere or the work culture? or is it you cant see happiness if you not happy? there are lot of possibilities and I see lot of opportunity where city can take initiative to make the residents happy.

Maybe this can a be new way to design, design for happiness. I should contact some design competition organizers to organize a competition which has a topic "design for happiness".