Data Art – The Secret to Happiness



This is a speech by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, a famous positive psychologist contributes to understanding of creativity, fulfillment, and happiness.

I always ask myself, “what person do I want to become?” Even though money and personal properties is so dominant in our daily life, I have never regarded becoming a rich person as my goal. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi noted that money cannot make us happy, but he looks to those who find pleasure and lasting satisfaction in activities which contains a state of “flow”.  Indeed, money is important to me, but it is not something I am pursuing and achieving.

Statistic shows money is not directly related to happiness.

So I created this data sketch:

Figure on the left is an entity that represent the connection between money and happiness (green represent money and yellow represent happiness.) While people subconsciously believe that money and happiness have significant connection (light pink means connect), they are barely related, whereas the tile of cozy color palette representing the various activities in our life can subtly contribute to the fulfillment and happiness when we develop a “flow” into the things we are pursuing.

Spheres grow larger when they are clicked. The graph shows that the growth of income does not relate to the people’s happiness, but, as the study indicated, it only swallows the rate of happiness and the connection of them will disappear. The statistic shows happiness is an independent constant that only 30 percent of people feel happy in any stage of income.

I was try to incorporate Piet Mondrian golden ratio art style, but the original art piece was difficult in representing caparison. Nevertheless, I was inspired in math aspects and the structure of the left side was calculated with golden ratio, implying the way of finding happiness in life is to distribute properties and activities properly in a perfect ratio.

4 Comments Add yours

  1. Kaamil says:

    I’m a big fan of this data (and the Golden Ratio). For the pink shades and different activities that you can achieve flow – what does the color intensity of the different activities signify?

  2. Conor says:

    Having the sphere that represents money “swallow” the sphere representing happiness was the most compelling part for me. I love how you illustrated that the two are not only not completely connected, but that the growth of money particularly can even diminish happiness.

  3. Oliver says:

    This was a really strong statement in showing how money does not increase happiness. I am a person who is freedom driven and seeing how money has no impact on personal happiness makes me feel glad I chose my path.

  4. Kat says:

    I like the concept behind the piece! I like the colors chosen as well.

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