In this talk, Lee shows how to bring joy to every level of an organization, from the physical environment to leadership behaviors, to improve employee health and retention, innovation and collaboration, and organizational success. Studies show joyful doctors make better diagnoses, joyful salespeople improve customer satisfaction, and joyful employees are up to 12% more productive.

But the irony is that joy originally evolved to motivate our early human ancestors to pursue goals, and psychologists are beginning to understand that rather than being a distraction from success, joy actually fuels it. In the pursuit of business success and bottom-line results, joy is an attribute that can often seem trivial or unimportant. Grounding these insights with real-world examples, Lee shows how the aesthetics of joy can be used to create unique, innovative products and experiences that can captivate audiences, increase the adoption of new technologies, and build well-loved brands with timeless appeal. We think of joy as elusive and intangible, but what if we could create products and experiences that reliably give people a feeling of joy? In this talk, Lee reveals the specific physical attributes that trigger our hardwired impulses toward joy, showing why some products feel delightful while others don’t, and how tangible elements can be used to create powerful moments of surprise, magic, and wonder.

The Secret to Creating Universally Joyful Products and Experiences She loves pancakes, polka dots, and rainbow sprinkles, and has an extensive repertoire of happy dances for any occasion. Lee holds a Master’s in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute and a Bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University.

Her design work has been exhibited at imm Cologne, Germany. She was a founding faculty member in the Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has over twelve years of experience in design and branding, having led design programs for Target, Condé Nast, Eileen Fisher, American Express, Kate Spade, Diageo, Pepsico, and the US government, among others. Lee has been featured as an expert on design and joy by outlets such as The New York Times, Wired, PRI’s Studio 360, CBC’s Spark, Psychology Today, and Fast Company. Her immensely popular TED talk “Where Joy Hides and How to Find it” has been viewed more than 17 million times. As a former design director at IDEO, author of Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, and the founder of the website The Aesthetics of Joy, she empowers people to find more joy in life and work through design. Ingrid Fetell Lee is a designer and author whose groundbreaking work reveals the hidden influence of our surroundings on our emotions and wellbeing.

Ingrid joy