An exploration of possibilities to fortify the already awesome Action for Happiness UX, analytics, and engineering for individuals and communities to thrive.
Not a proposed plan of action but a jumping-off point for discussion and ideas.
Let members experience light coaching through short, structured AI dialogs — with psychological safety guardrails baked in.
Start with a surface answer. Follow-up prompts pull out specifics, then connect the pattern to the rest of the member's life.
Short sessions, scoped to one Key at a time. Hard guardrails on crisis content, with warm hand-off to human resources.
Each Key gets its own dialog flow — gratitude, relating, meaning — using the same language and framing members already know.
/10-keys/emotions
Each conversation leaves behind small, durable facts about the member — reframed through a positive psychology lens — that show up in future dialogs across all 10 Keys.
The gratitude chat hears: “my friend Ada notices what I'm worried about.”
Stored as: has at least one close friend who shows attentive care; values being seen.
Two weeks later in the Relating chat, the dialog might begin: “Last time you mentioned Ada noticing things — have you told her what that meant to you?”
Members see what's been remembered, can edit or delete any fact, and choose whether memory is on at all.
Researchers are starting to publish full prompt sets and evaluation results — meaning we won't have to invent this from scratch, and we can build on instruments with measurable effects.
Read the preprintosf.io/…/2bf7t_v1 →
Five well-known instruments, each typically free for non-commercial use with attribution. Together they give a richer picture than any one number ever could.
Five pillars of flourishing: Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Accomplishment.
Butler & Kern, 2016Explanatory style across permanence, pervasiveness, personalization. The classic Seligman optimism measure.
Peterson et al., 1982The Satisfaction with Life Scale — a single, well-validated number for global life evaluation.
Diener et al., 1985Ranked profile across 24 strengths — the “what's right with you” map. Free at viacharacter.org.
Peterson & Seligman, 2004Sense of community across membership, influence, needs fulfillment, emotional connection.
Chavis, Lee & Acosta, 2008Members pick which assessments to take. Each one feeds one or more dimensions of their living profile.
Each assessment becomes a snapshot. Stack the snapshots and you get a trajectory — with gentle nudges to check in again at the right moment.
Take the retention engineering playbook from product teams and feed wellbeing data into the same loop. Members stay longer when they thrive in and feel connected to the community.
UX behaviour, biology, and how members actually feel.
What members who stay and thrive do that churners don't.
Nudge toward the paths that build community.
A feedback loop where every cycle improves both the UX and the lives of the people inside it.
Segment events, GA, attendance at groups and live talks, calendar use, course completion, volunteering, social shares.
Steps, resting heart rate, HRV, sleep — pulled from Apple Health or Google Fit, with strict consent and aggregation.
SCI-2, BSCS, PERMA, SWLS, ASQ — rotated short and timed so no member is over-surveyed.
Subtle reminder when a relevant talk is coming up — tied to topics the member already follows.
30-second highlights seeded into the AFH community feed and social channels — lowering the cost of trying.
When a member sets a calendar action for a Key, the relevant talk is offered alongside in one tap.
Talks woven into daily Action emails when themes overlap — part of the journey, not extra homework.
Borrow what product design has long known: the more clearly people can see their own progress, the harder it becomes to drift away. Four small mechanics, each grounded in well-studied behaviour change.
Calendar cross-offs after each daily Action. Course progress bars. Members can always see what they've done — and what's next.
When a PERMA score ticks up, the third talk gets watched, or a 10 Days finishes — surface the moment with a small ritual instead of letting it pass unnoticed.
Days-of-practice and Action-completion streaks. People become genuinely invested in not breaking the chain — built carefully so it stays motivating, not punishing.
In the literature this is called a Just-in-Time Adaptive Intervention (JITAI) — supporting people in the context, and at the moment, when help is most useful and most welcome. Three concrete forms for AFH:
Anchor a new habit to one members already do every day — opening the browser. The extension overlays a slice of the screen with today's exercise, or, for those who want it, a full-screen takeover that pauses doomscrolling and offers a Key in its place.
View Pause Therapy →Pair members for weekly mutual check-ins. The simple act of telling another human about a goal radically shifts follow-through — especially when the partner is themselves a member.
Re-platforming the AFH site from Drupal to Next.js, with Payload as the headless admin. The migration unlocks speed, flexibility, and AI-friendly tooling without sacrificing what currently works.
Server-side rendering and static generation keep crawlability and Core Web Vitals strong — redirects from existing Drupal URLs handled at the edge.
Modern stack means modern tooling.
Block-based page composition, live preview of the real Next.js site, role-based permissions, version history, focal-point image management, and a REST + GraphQL API for free.
Use the new stack to draft, design, and schedule social content end-to-end — with humans on the loop where it matters most.
Staff or contributors curate a finding, study, or quote worth sharing.
LLM proposes 2–3 caption variants in AFH's voice, with a clear hook.
Templated HTML page auto-fills with copy, the right Key colour, and any imagery.
Headless browser renders the design at platform-correct dimensions.
One-click approve, edit, or reject — the loop closes only with consent.
Two pieces of the new AFH already running on this site — ready to play with right now.
/calendar →
/10-keys/emotions →
For joining me on this exploration.