Positive Design

A design framework, articulated by Desmet and Pohlmeyer, that explicitly targets human flourishing by attending to three components of subjective well-being: pleasure (positive affect in the moment), personal significance (pursuit of meaningful goals), and virtue (acting in line with one's values). Rather than fixing problems or removing pain points, positive design asks how a product or system can contribute to a good life. In accessibility, positive design has been picked up as a counterweight to deficit- or access-focused approaches that frame disability primarily as something to be compensated for; it directs designers to ask how assistive technologies can enable joy, creativity, identity expression, and self-defined goals for disabled users.