South by Southwest Interactive (SXSW) is a five-day-long event in Austin, Texas, that showcases the best new things in technology and science. At this year’s festival in mid-March, Ms. Acacia Parks, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Hiram College, was invited to present. Dr. Parks, who also serves as the scientific advisor to a start-up company called Happify, spoke on her findings in the area of positive psychology as they relate to her work at the new venture.
Happify is a website and app that uses findings in positive psychology to increase users’ happiness. The app does this in a multitude of ways; using game dynamics, information from user’s real life gleaned via a questionnaire and by assigning personalized goals designed to increase their happiness. During this year’s festival, Dr. Parks and Happify President Ofer Leidner, M.B.A., presented “Money Can’t Buy Happiness, but Data Can Teach It” at the prestigious interactive festival.
While it has the added advantage of promoting their product, Dr. Parks and Leidner’s panel focused mainly on how science and business can work together to create something extraordinary. “We provide a good model for other entrepreneurs who might want to take science to the general public,” Dr. Parks said. “Happify is not only providing this great service, but it’s also providing a model for how scientific collaboration can happen in a real-world entrepreneurship environment. There are plenty of other areas where science can be helpful.”
Dr. Parks’ main role as the scientific advisor is to work directly with writers and game developers to ensure the content is created based on positive psychology research. Most importantly, however, is that the finished product is still easy for the general public to understand and use. She also analyzes user data to quantify results so she can determine how Happify is performing for users. So far, the data has been positive, although her research won’t be complete until later this summer.
That’s what makes Happify so unique, in Dr. Parks’ opinion. The company isn’t just interested in the number of profits that they make, but also in the science that goes into it and the research that comes out of it. With Happify, Parks has also been able to reach her goal of making science easily accessible to the general public. There is no doubt that she’ll do amazing in whatever goals or ventures she sets out to achieve in the future.