We feel…grateful
An award nomination calls for a moment of reflection
This past Tuesday evening, Apple announced its nominees for its much-anticipated annual design award. We were grateful to learn that How We Feel was chosen as a finalist in for a 2024 Apple Design Award in the Social Impact space! 🥳 This is a great excuse for us to reflect on where we’ve been and share some of the design decisions that went into the creation of the app, and the Mood Meter specifically.
First, we want to thank the design contributors (Andreas Helin, Sara Strand, Ben Powell, Patrik Goethe) who have brought their talents to our work over the past four years. You brought an abstract concept to life, building a bridge from academia to consumer products in a delightful way. And that work has not gone unnoticed — this nomination and this post is here to celebrate how design, coupled with psychological research, can create a tool to serve, educate and inspire.
The beating heart of our app is Dr. Marc Brackett’s “Mood Meter.” The initial inspiration for our emotion shapes came from his (and his Uncle Marvin’s) curriculum. From that base, the How We Feel design team brought the Mood Meter concept to life in a tactile emotional landscape, visualizing feelings as abstract, geometric shapes.
“In designing the shape system, our goal was to develop a visual language that simplifies and enriches your journey through the emotional spectrum. Each shape, abstract yet evocative, mirrors and personifies a specific feeling: Sharp, jagged edges for high-energy, stormy emotions and soft, smooth curves for moments of calm and serenity.” — Andreas Helin
Designer Patrik Goethe built the interactive Mood Meter using “both pure Metal and SceneKit predecessors.” He says, “After many investigations, I eventually landed on a simple vector-based approach to make it possible to add more shapes over time. Man do I love the haptics api. The Mood Meter was a polish-every-glitch-by-compiling-ten-thousand-times kind of adventure (a technique that I think gets a bit lost sometimes in the industry).”
The app’s distinctive illustration style comes to life through our “Emotions 101” videos where figurative line illustrations merge with the app’s vibrant, geometric shapes. As Sara Strand describes it, “Our approach was to give emotions a form — a body if you will — using the shapes as canvases enriched with intricate details. This method allows us to develop highly expressive characters while maintaining feelings as the focal point.”
And second, while we love to celebrate our incredible design team, this post would be remiss if it neglected to thank YOU, our growing How We Feel community. Your generous feedback and support continually inspires us to improve and innovate on the app. This recognition is a testament to the positive impact you are making in your own, and others, lives. Together, we are making a difference. Let’s continue this journey to promote emotional wellbeing!
The How We Feel Team
p.s. We are on a journey together, and our team is working on some exciting new ideas. Please provide feedback through this brief survey. If you’d like to get in touch, comment below or send us an email at support@howwefeel.org.
Y’all are brilliant! Congratulations on this recognition. You’ve earned it.
Love your app!