Intro
During a class about Emotional Design, I was exposed to the World Happiness Report and found myself curious about the measurements of happiness in the context of society and our lives. Understanding what was considered pre or post-pandemic and how this affected us economically, socially, and emotionally seems appealing to me.
It was first launched by the United Nations in 2012. The initiative was inspired by the Bhutanese concept of Gross National Happiness, which emphasizes well-being and happiness as integral to measuring a nation’s progress, rather than solely focusing on economic indicators. One of the main goals of the World Happiness Report is to provide policymakers with insights into the well-being of their populations. By identifying the factors contributing to happiness, governments can develop policies and initiatives to enhance the quality of life for their citizens.
The World Happiness is a Sustainable Development Solutions Network publication, powered by the Gallup World Poll data. The World Happiness Report reflects a worldwide demand for more attention to happiness and well-being as criteria for government policy. It reviews the state of happiness today and shows how the science of happiness explains personal and national variations in happiness. Respondents are asked to evaluate their own lives using a Cantril ladder, where 0 represents the worst possible life and 10 the best possible life. The scores are then averaged for each country.
“Happiness: Towards a holistic approach to development”
Published by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the preparation of the World Happiness Report is at the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, with research support from the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics; the Vancouver School of Economics at the University of British Columbia; the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford; and the Helping and Happiness Lab at Simon Fraser University.
The report has faced some criticism, including debates about the cultural biases inherent in measuring and comparing happiness across diverse societies. Critics argue that cultural nuances and individual perceptions may not be adequately captured by a standardized survey.
Objectives and Goals
Understand the appendix data provided by the report and create visualizations based on Avergae GDP per capita and the relation of social aspects from the report such as Life Ladder, Generosity, Freedom to Make Life Choices, Social Support, Perceptions of corruption and Healthy Life Expectancy at Birth.
Research Questions:
1- What are the top 10 countries that have the highest Log GDP Per Capita in the world?
2- What are the countries that ones that have the highest Happines Parameters?
Design Process
When accessing data, I downloaded two data sets that were part of the appendix & data section here of the World Happiness Report 2023. For Visualization #1, I utilized Tableau Public and included all countries within the report and the Avg. Log GDP per capita. For spacing purposes, I have included a snippet of the top 10 countries that averaged the highest GDP below. This visualization helped to answer the Question #1.
I noticed that besides the United States, Nordic countries are in the top 5 with the highest GDP per capita. This made me have another question: Are Nordic countries also in the top 5 regarding the World Happiness Report?
Based on this Berkley’s article “Why are Nordic countries so happy?” mentions that have social cohesion between economics, social justice, and quality of life regardless of low temperature and relative geographic isolation. The initiative from the World Happiness Report states that economic impact doesn’t guarantee happiness but is enhanced by factors related to the quality of institutions, reliable and extensive welfare benefits, low corruption, and well-functioning democracy and state institutions.
Furthermore, Nordic citizens experience a high sense of autonomy and freedom, as well as high levels of social trust towards each other, which play an important role in determining life satisfaction.
In Visualization #2, I decided to include Luxembourg since it was the country that has the highest GDP and compare its social values besides Nordic countries (Nederlands, Norway, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland). I was able to notice that Nordic countries have pretty low perceptions of corruption (besides Iceland) all values are low came as low from the data. Nederlands has the highest value when it comes to Generosity, however, it has fluctuated since post-pandemic years.
| Life Ladder | Happiness score considering positive emotions as engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment |
| Generosity | Happier than someone who is greedy and experiences greed. But the same holds true for fairness, solidarity, etc. |
| Freedom to Make Choices | Is the national average of responses to the GWP question: “Are you satisfied or dissatisfied with your freedom to choose what you do with your life?” |
| Social Support | Is the national average of the binary responses (either 0 or 1) to the question: “If you were in trouble, do you have relatives or friends you can count on to help you whenever you need them?” |
| Log Gross Domestic Product (GDP) Per Capita | Economic and social growth rate |
| Perceptions of Corruption | Sense of lack of respect for laws, regulations, and public matters |
| Healthy Life Expectancy at Birth | The average number of years a person would expect to live in good health in a particular area is based on modern mortality rates in that area and the prevalence of self-reported good health. |
It is interesting that when it comes to Freedom to make choices, all Nordic countries are pretty stable compared to Luxemburg. This helps me to conclude that the countries that have more social resources have the highest sense of freedom and therefore, happiness. This visualization helped me to answer research question #2.
Interview Design
To receive feedback on my presentations, I booked two user research sessions to understand what are users thinking about my visualizations #1 and #2 and their overall understanding of the project and chances of improvement. These sessions were held both online, including the following questions:
| Number | Question |
| 1 | Age and occupation |
| 2 | Have you ever heard about the World Happines Report? If Yes, explain |
| 3 | What are your general impressions of Visualization #1? |
| 4 | What are your general impressions of Visualization #2? |
| 5 | What do you consider to be important when it comes to your happiness? |
Insights from Interviews
| User #1 | User #2 |
| 36, Freelance Graphic Designer | 34, Financial Analyst |
| No, I have never heard about it – But I can see how important Happiness is around the world. | Yes, at economics calls in grad school. It’s an interesting approach to socio-economics and data collection. |
| I am not surprised that the USA is the first one when it comes to log GDP per capita, although I don’t think the “Happiness” here is much. Now, I am quite surprised that it’s followed by three Nordic countries. | I wasn’t very familiar with the terminology under visualization #1, but it was helpful to have the “data dictionary” beforehand. It would have been useful to include a whole listing of countries and the Log on GDP Per capita, but I understand why you selected the top ones because of spacing constraints. |
| It would be interesting to see the USA also in this comparison dashboard, since is the country we live in. But is interesting people that who live in Nordic countries such as Denmark and Sweden not only have high Log GDP per capita but also high life generosity and expectations of life. Add more spacing between every value to make the subheaders easier to read. | I like the color scheme you selected between countries and it’s also interesting to see that the values from the report have different values although they are all together in the dashboard. It was shocking to see that Luxembourg was part of the visualization and it didn’t make much sense to me – besides that, it had the highest GDP per capita. |
| “Doing something I love regardless of my income, I never cared much about money as long as I am happy with my work.” | “Happiness to me means being financially stable and comfortable while working on something I love to do. A mix of health, income, security, and being able to save for retirement.” |
After I received this feedback, I decided to create Visualization #3, which includes the main values considered from the World Happines Report 2023 combined with Nordic countries and The USA. This is to juxtapose how these countries are “currently doing well.”
Reflexion and Critique
I felt more comfortable working with Tableau Public for this final report, this is the software I felt more intuitive and comfortable working with during the semester. I also think that I have gotten better at accessing data and looking for reliable resources making it easier to select a layout based on the type of information to view.
It seemed easy for my UX research and users to understand the information layout and they suggested mostly in context-concept rather than visuals. I’d prefer if the data had some information regarding this ongoing year (2023) besides only 2022, since this year is about to end, I would have been interested in seeing the data about the continuation of the post-pandemic days.
Resources
GALLUP. “Understanding the Thoughts, Feelings, and Behaviors of People Around the World.” (n.d) Global Research. https://www.gallup.com/analytics/318875/global-research.aspx
World Happiness Data. About, (n.d), https://worldhappiness.report/about/
Helliwell, John F., Richard Layard, Jeffrey Sachs, and Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, eds. 2020. World Happiness Report 2023. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network. “World Happiness Report 2023.” Read the Report, https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2023/.
The World Bank. “DataBank | World Development Indicators.” (n.d), https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators.
Jessica Yu, Graphic Designer: Acasia Giannakouros. “Why Are Nordic Countries so Happy?” (March 7, 2023) Business Review at Berkeley, businessreview.berkeley.edu/why-are-nordic-countries-so-happy/#:~:text=To%20begin%2C%20one%20of%20the,community%20a%20more%20pleasant%20experience.
Frank Martela, Bent Greve, Bo Rothstein, Joho Saari. “The Nordic Exceptionalism: What Explains Why the Nordic Countries Are Constantly Among the Happiest in the World.” The Nordic Exceptionalism:, (March 20, 2020), worldhappiness.report/ed/2020/the-nordic-exceptionalism-what-explains-why-the-nordic-countries-are-constantly-among-the-happiest-in-the-world/.