Track Your Happiness 12+

I like the his app, or I should say I like the idea of it. There are some inherent problems, however.

First: the app keeps kicking me out, and especially when I’m doing other things, I don’t want to have to take the time to log in, remember which username/password I used, etc.

Second: if I’m more unhappy/depressed, I’m much less likely to bother spending the time it takes to complete a short survey than if I’m feeling good. I’m sure I’m not the only person who experiences this and it automatically creates a user bias toward a higher average happiness.

When I was severely depressed/suicidal, I didn’t even bother opening the app. Now that I’m doing better, it feels like a lot of effort to log in every time so I just ignore all the notifications that pop up.

There were some other things I thought could be useful, like weekly or monthly tracking of specific markers of happiness, e.g.: family/career satisfaction, financial stability, interactions with friends, activities engaged in, etc. as well as things that might be correlated with happiness, such as alcohol consumption/drug use.

Heard about this project through the TED Radio Hour podcast. I think it's a really great start to pinpointing what drives our happiness. I love that it is randomized, convenient, and likely reliable (as a "self improvement" tool, respondents are probably much less likely to answer dishonestly). The only addition I'd like to see is questions about the quality of human interaction, similar to the "productivity" question. For instance, if you recently got in a fight with your spouse, your low happiness score wouldn't be related to the fact that you're with someone, but more specifically related to the fact that you're with someone who you're upset with. The downside to this is it runs the risk of making the surveys too detailed and extensive, but personally, I think my level of happiness is closely related to the quality and status of my relationships. This is a great app though, and I'm really enjoying being a part of it.

I learnt about this app in my psych class; it's a pretty awesome app! It's especially fun to see the correlations between activity and mood become clearer as time goes on and you use the app longer.
One suggestion I'd like to make is to make the question choices more accessible to a variety of people--which is to say, I'm a college student and I find that some questions (esp. the "where are you"? question) are difficult to answer (if I'm at the dining hall, am I at a restaurant? At home? At work? etc.). I'm aware that if you're doing a case study, it's easier to collapse these demographics across the board, but the lives of college students are pretty radically different from adulthood and that might be a confounding factor. Otherwise, I'm having a lot of fun with this app on a micro, personal scale! :)