What Makes You Happy
Opens the original study.
- Study
- Survey analysis, PERMA framework
- Who
- DAU IUxD students, undergraduate and postgraduate
- Question
- Recall one moment that made you happy and classify it
- Method
- Chi-square tests, effect sizes, personas
- Year
- 2026
01 Question
What makes design students happy, and does it differ by who they are?
Respondents recalled one specific moment that made them happy and classified it into one of seven categories. Every framework applied afterwards, including PERMA, is an interpretation of that single choice.
- Respondents364
- Categories7
- PERMA pillars5
02 Method
A one-letter typo hid 46 responses from the first analysis.
A mapping used a capital M where the data held a lowercase m, so pandas dropped the rows without a warning. The first pass ran on 318 responses instead of 364. Every mapping now carries an assertion check, so an unmatched category fails loudly.
- Responses hidden46
- Counted in the first pass318
- Counted now364
03 Findings
Accomplishment leads by a narrow margin.
33.5% of respondents chose Accomplishment and 28.3% chose Relationships. Three themes carry the dataset.
- Accomplishment33.5%
- Relationships28.3%
- Chose Accomplishment122
03 Findings
Gender and course do not predict the source of happiness.
Both chi-square tests were non-significant, with negligible effect sizes (p = .37 for gender). The gap in the first draft's bar chart is noise at this sample size.
- Gender and categoryp = .37
- Men272
- Women89
Respondents
364 people
Each dot is one respondent. Dots show group sizes, not individual answers.
04 Personas
- Growth and self-development, 39.8%The Driven AchieverGoal-oriented and results-focused. Happiest after an accomplishment.
- Relational and social, 28.3%The Empathetic ConnectorValues harmony. Happiest in moments of affection and bonding.
- Calm, presence and restoration, 31.9%The Serene ContemplatorReflective. Happiest in nature, in the moment and at leisure.
- 01Three lenses on one questionAn emotion split, a five-pillar PERMA mapping and an intensity proxy read the same seven categories.
- 02Test before reportingPatterns are tested statistically before they are called findings.
- 03Drop thin personasA fourth, engagement-driven persona had 23 responses (6.3%), too few to characterise.
05 Limits
- 98.6% of responses arrived across four days, mostly in class.
- The sample skews male (74.7%) and undergraduate (81.3%).
- There is no free text and no validated well-being scale, so the pillars are the researcher's reading.
- Mapping Nature to Meaning is the most debatable call, since it could equally map to Positive Emotion.
The research site
Get in Touch