Palm Happiness: A Location-Based Application to Promote Awareness of Everyday Happy Moments

Abstract

There has been growing interest in the development of mobile applications aimed at promoting mental well-being. In this paper, we present one such application that was developed based on the three good things, a psychological intervention that aims to cultivate positive mental well-being and has been shown to help reduce depression and improve perceived happiness. The application combines a digitized version of the intervention with a location-based recommender system that can suggest nearby locations which could provide opportunities for users to experience positive emotions. The key characteristics of the "good things"recorded by users are also visualized to help users better self-reflect on what made them happy in daily life. A preliminary evaluation of the system was carried out with 13 users, showing above average scores for usability, perspicuity,novelty as well as perceived usefulness and intention to use.