Somerville's Developing a 'Happiness App'

The city of Somerville is hoping harness mobile technology to continue its ongoing study of happiness.

In 2011 the city made international news with its so-called "" a report on the wellbeing of residents based on a special questionnaire filled out by households in town. The report was profiled in places like The New York Times, CBS Evening News and The Guardian.

Now, Somerville is partnering with an organization to develop a happiness smartphone app.

Daniel Hadley, director of SomerStat, the branch of city government that collects and crunches data, said the app is still in development, but he hopes to run a pilot program at City Hall this fall, with a public rollout of the app sometime after that.

There's an app for that

The app is being developed by an organization called the H(app)athon Project, which wants to use crowdsourcing data to improve people's happiness and create a "happiness economy."

The organization also conducts surveys and runs workshops. Somerville will likely be the first community in the country to use the app, Hadley said, although "tech geeks" in places like Boulder, Colo., are also interested.

The H(app)athon Project's website says the app, which is currently scheduled to be released in in March of 2014, "will learn a person’s behavior and what brings them meaning."

It continues, "We’ve created an interactive survey people can take over the course of two weeks that will utilize 'active data' (answers they provide) plus 'passive data' (answers sensors in their phone provide). This will help give us a fuller picture of how a person finds meaning so we can connect them to Actions that will increase their Happiness and well-being." (I'm not sure why "Actions" and "Happiness" begin with uppercase letters).

SomerStat is working closely with the project, Hadley said, adding the H(app)athon Project wants to "roll it out and demonstrate its usefulness in Somerville."

It needs to be useful 

Hadley said the app has "got to be useful to the end user" in order for people to appreciate it. If it's just about City Hall collecting data, it won't work.

Ideally, after people use the app for a while, it will give them a report, saying, for instance, that "you were happiest when you were in Davis Square eating falafel with your friends," said Hadley, giving a hypothetical example.

People who download the app to their smartphones will occasionally be prompted to answer some questions about their mood, activities and thoughts about city services. But the phones themselves will collect a lot of data silently, such as users' locations, whether they're moving or being still, the weather, and even ambient sound.

Asked if people might find it a bit Big Brother, Hadley said, "Yeah, I can see that … there are going to be some people who are turned off."

He stressed the city is not interested in an individual's data, but rather the aggregate data. He also hopes the app will allow users to control what data to share with whom.

And, of course, no one's forcing you to use the app.

An announcement about the effort from the city says the partnerhip is not costing the city any money.