Reflections on the design of HappyHere, a digital installation facilitating participation, reflection and discussion on wellbeing data in the Arts sector.

In the Arts sector there is increasing interest in the relationship between art and wellbeing. In this paper, we present research exploring the ways in which HappyHere engaged participants to reflect on and discuss wellbeing while visiting a leading art gallery. We describe the design of HappyHere and explain how tangible interactions in a community space can provide a novel approach for engaging participants and gathering data to enable the evaluation of mental wellbeing in museums and galleries. Finally, we reflect on qualitative research with participants and volunteers throughout the twelve-week deployment of the project. This paper disseminates the design process to allow Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers to deploy similar digital installations in new environments and establishes insights to inform the development of future tangible wellbeing research studies in the Arts and wider community, benefitting HCI researchers, arts professionals, healthcare practitioners and visitors to arts organisations.