Design your happiness today
Masamichi Souzou

HAPPINESS DEVELOPMENT FUND

A unique opportunity to support the use of modern design techniques to build the world for happiness

Explore Our Current Focus

Our Efforts

We are a company looking to optimize the world for happiness using the latest design techniques. We build products and services that support individuals to make changes that will improve their happiness, and help organizations and governments to put in place systems that will improve the happiness of their employees, partners, customers, and citizens. Our name, Masamichi Souzou (正道想像), means “Correct Path, Imagined/Created” in Japanese.

Why Happiness

We believe happiness is the ultimate design intent. In reality almost all activities we undertake are begun because we believe we will be better off or happier through their attainment. The problem is that most of society's activities are not motivated directly by a desire to improve our happiness, but rather focus on other outcomes, like the optimization of profit, or efficiencies.

And when these secondary aims are achieved, we are no happier, and in fact much of the society we have built through these optimizations is antithetical to our happiness.

How We Do It

We have been on the front lines of designing products and services for some of the world's top companies for the past 15 years. We take the same design toolkit (Design Thinking, Service Design, UX/UI Design, Systems Thinking, etc.) that we refined and mastered in various corporate settings, and apply it to the challenges individuals, organisations, and civic bodies face for the optimization of their happiness.

Nature and growth

Our Current Focus

Building civic happiness

We want to help support small towns and cities optimize for the happiness of their citizens. We've developed the Version 1.0 of our Civic Happiness Toolkit, and having tested our process with a first partner city. We are now looking to expand the effort.

Contact us to Learn More

Donate Now

Initial support will allow us to develop an updated version of our Civic Happiness Toolkit, distribute it widely for small towns and cities, host monthly virtual talks, run training workshops, conduct subsidized demonstration projects, and measure the impact of our interventions.

Donate Today

Happiness Development Fund

Our Happiness Development fund allows you to donate directly to activities working to improve the world's happiness. Your support funds a global wave of work looking to explore, understand, and create a world that better supports human happiness.

Find a donation level that is comfortable for your current financial situation and does not interfere with your basic needs. If you earn less than $90,000 a year, we suggest donating no more than $100 dollars per year or $10/month to the HDF.

*This is a donation with no tax benefits for the donor, as MMSZ is not a charity. (We purposely do this to avoid taking tax revenue away from democratic programs and services that may support critical basic civic infrastructure and life.)

Why Us

Our team has run hundreds of design projects, with some of the biggest and most celebrated companies in the world. We have deep experience in the healthcare delivery space, and we believe this simple yet radical new approach to happiness can begin to create major change. Every part of our organization has been created in line with our mission and goals, and designed for happiness. From our 4-day work week, to our Minimum Happiness Salary, to our Personal Happiness Behavior support, and our operating and funding model, we are serious about designing every part of the world for happiness.

Working on happiness

Meet our core team

J. Paul Neeley

Founder & Designer

J. Paul Neeley

J. Paul is a designer & researcher based in London with expertise in service design & speculative design, and extensive healthcare experience. He has worked at the Mayo Clinic in the Center for Innovation and teaches at the Royal College of Art in London on Service Design. He has been actively exploring approaches for the optimization of happiness for the past 12 years.

Elliott Wortham

Co-Founder & Strategist

Elliott Wortham

Elliott is a strategist & designer working in San Francisco. He has degrees in Sociology and Health Administration, and experience across healthcare organizations such as Cleveland Clinic and Sutter Health.

Our Values

CONSIDER EVERYTHING

We consider everything. Everything in the world is connected together in very complex ways, and nothing falls outside of our purview.

OPTIMIZE HAPPINESS

We seek the greatest possible happiness for the greatest number of people over the longest period of time.

UNIVERSAL RESPONSIBILITY

We look to understand and take responsibility for the TOTAL impact of all of our actions in the world.

Let's Do This

Create Unique Impact

Break the mold, pioneer a new path, try something radical, trailblaze. The world deserves new ways of thinking and approaching problems and solutions around happiness. Be a part of the next wave by supporting the Happiness Development Fund.