Fostering Positive Connections Through Interactive Messages: HAPPI

Loneliness is on the rise, accelerating during and after the COVID-19 Pandemic. Loneliness contributes major costs from higher mortality rates and economic costs where individuals lack human connection in natural settings. Pursuit to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 3.4 to promote mental health and well-being, our project, “HAPPI” is a facilitator to create togetherness by sympathizing parts of the shared human experience through (1) responding to prompts that harmonizes with each other's lives and (2) receiving these responses through printed pamphlets made for each unique individual user. HAPPI is to be used in natural settings such as at a college campus. Our design is formulated on psychological and cultural studies on loneliness, positivity/happiness, and social connection, along with interviews with students of different backgrounds and working psychologists. HAPPI is a robot-like device that takes an input from a user through an iPad, outputs a printed message through a printer, and has a body that takes the shape of a robot! In this article, we describe our steps in creating HAPPI to foster positive connections through authentic messages.