Happiness Meter

The Happiness Meter is one of Dubai's first strategic 'smart city' initiatives. The world’s first, city-wide, live sentiment capture engine, the meter builds on the directive of UAE Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Rashid to ‘make Dubai the happiest city on Earth.’

Working closely with The Executive Office of Dubai, we have had the opportunity of translating the initial brief from concept to launch. We recently also unveiled the new brand identity for the Smart Dubai initiative, it's strategic framework, positioning and communication strategy.

BRANDING HAPPINESS

Our research validated the need for significantly simple interactions when measuring happiness of a city’s residents and visitors. The challenge was complimenting the minimalist brand language for Smart Dubai but owning a universally recognised symbology, regardless of language or context. We built on the symbol from the basic building block of the Smart Dubai mark—a circle—and added a minimalist smile to capture the subtle but effective sentiment of joy.

DEPLOYMENT FRAMEWORK

We built the framework to define data types, API requirements, partner deployment guidelines and reporting framework for dashboards, to be deployed in partnership with strategic partners Dubai Smart Government. The meter will be deployed as touch-screens, web widgets and mobile app add-on across all government service touch-points, followed by private sector partners and eventually openly available for single-click deployment by anybody in the city looking to integrate the Happiness Meter in their experience. The data is linked directly to a live dashboard to indicate sentiment across the city.

The Happiness Meter standard across the city of Dubai paved the way towards building the city-wide Happiness Agenda, making decision-making across government rooted in data-driven insights for happiness.