[I've cross posted this to the Made by Many blog where there should be some more conversation, so you might want to head to www.j.mp/happyappy.]

I recently watched the utterly fantastic TED talk 'The Happy Planet Index' by Nic Marks. The talk covers a lot of sensible ground including why the environmental movement needs to shift their tactics and also the quite stunning results from his research on measuring countries' happiness in relation to life expectancy, contentment and ecological efficiency (hint: the results will surprise you).

It's well worth 17 minutes of your time (embedded below).

However it was his concluding comments about the key ingredients driving people's happiness that really caught my attention. Marks only had time to race through the 5 principles that came out of some research by the New Economics Foundation (nef) in 2008. The principles were:

• Connect
• Be active
• Take notice
• Keep learning
• Give

Not many surprising ones there (although "take notice" is a lovely addition), and after I had finished watching the talk, I was chatting to my Made by Many colleague Paul Sims about how simple and yet fantastic these principles were. I think it was Paul who first suggested that putting these principles into practice and recording them with a mobile application could be an amazingly powerful tool. (NB: The two of us have been playing around with the brilliant iPhone app mappiness of late so it's no surprise our heads were in this space).

As a result I spent the weekend digging around and finding out a little more about the research. I quickly came across a terrific summary of the nef research which had been "commissioned by the UK Government’s Foresight Project on Mental Capital and Well-being to review the inter-disciplinary work of over 400 scientists from across the world".

Here are the summary results:

Anyway, I decided to spend the weekend mocking up a bunch of pages to see how these principles could work within an iPhone app.

My design skills are pretty much confined to Keynote shape manipulation, so luckily I had the wonderful Anel Palafox (@thinkdsignchnge) on hand to polish things up to make it all presentable (not to mention that she's a great social designer used to applying creative thinking to social challenges!)

Mock-ups embedded below but would recommend you check them out full-screen.

So I guess next steps is to get someone (nef?) to get some money together to build the app (I'd humbly recommend Made by Many!). Would love some feedback and any comments. Obviously there's loads missing in these screens. For example, I imagine that you could set daily push notifications to remind you to share 'well-being moments', as well as deciding whether you want your posts to be private or public etc. Or perhaps it should be integrated into Twitter?

All in all, I reckon this could be an awesome, helpful and fascinating app.

What do you think? Would you use it?

(Comments below or alternatively get in touch via Twitter @juzmcmuz. You'll also note that I borrowed some screens and elements from such great iPhone apps as Facebook, Echofon & Evernote; sure they won't mind!)

I've long been a postcard collector & thought it about time to get them out of shoeboxes & onto the wall. But how to present them interestingly & differently? I didn't want a simple collage because the postcards represent various mixed moments, memories and mementos. They're like a kaleidoscopic, splintered history, so I decided to (painstakingly) cut dozens of postcards into thin slivers, mix them up thoroughly, and then randomly stick them onto the canvas in vertical stripes. All fun. 

A change in direction for this collage piece I'm putting together. You're looking at dozens of postcards I've collected over last couple of years... painstakingly cut into slivers and then in the process of being re-assembled... randomly. A twist to come. Should be done by the weekend.

I'm a postcard collector and they are better on walls than in shoeboxes. Finished piece coming soon.

I've just sent a little project out into the world :). It's called pixtories and it's all about collecting (very) short stories behind people's photos.

I'm hoping a few people will take part to get the ball rolling. Instructions are here (and if you're not a Twitterer, don't worry, just email me your photo & short story to pixtories AT googlemail.com).

It's based on the idea that everyone has their favourite photos but often the context of a photo - why it's important or significant - is hidden. It might be a special moment, bring back a certain memory, have personal meaning or just be something you love for some reason.

pixtories is about revealing these stories which are limited to 140 characters to help sharpen your storytelling focus! Check it out, let me know what you think and please share around. You can even check out my own entry!

When you're an 'ideas person', it doesn't take long to understand that ideas are pretty much useless without implementation (one reason why I think this site is so clever: http://the99percent.com).

However as someone who has loads of 'ideas' on a daily basis, this is a somewhat depressing conclusion to reach.

Surely all these ideas have some type of value?

I remember that a business consultant once told me that "the half-life of an idea is about three days". So what can be done to avoid this?

The obvious thing is sharing these ideas. The theory is that if an idea, not realised, slowly dies in your mind, it should be sent out into the world where it can have a chance of another life. It's unlikely that it will instantly be picked up by someone, but perhaps, just perhaps, it could spark another idea, or take on a life of its own.

Anyway, that's why I decided to start an experiment by setting up @openideas_feed.

The idea is that whoever wants to share an idea can tweet and tag it with #openideas. I'll keep an eye on any tweets including this hashtag and for anyone who wants to keep track of the ideas, they simply follow @openideas_feed.

Join in, tweet and tag, and see if this evolves in any interesting direction. At least, set your ideas free!

You know those brilliant ideas that strike while you're in the shower? What's all that about!?

Well, I've just set up a new site (and Twitter) to explore the notion of 'sub-conscious inspiration'; what it is, how it happens, what it means for our 'always on' world, and whether by understanding it better we can 'design' more radically creative lives.

Who knows where it may lead...

A few years ago I conceived and launched a little project called i-confide.

It was based on the idea of collecting people's innermost thoughts, dreams, hopes and fears. The site provided a 'trigger' (ie "I still harbour a dream to...") which people could respond to and then share with the world (anonymously if you so wished).

You could also rate, comment and favourite other people's confides.

The project was a lot of fun - a labour of love - and I learned much from it. It had some modest success; basically almost 2000 entries from loads of people in various countries around the world.

I recently decided to take the website down as I couldn't dedicate any more time or effort to it and there were a few too many bugs making it unusable.

If I had my time over, I would have created a simpler mechanic - the triggers weren't a complete success, even if people could create their own - and it probably appealed to too narrow an audience to get any real network effect. But what I really learned has how difficult it can be to sustain interest over a longer period when you can't control aspects like development, interaction design and visual design (not to mention promotion etc).