Design for Transformation

Abstract

The wellness industry in the United States sits at an estimated 1.8 trillion dollars in value as of 2024, with wellness spending showing significant gains among Gen Z and Millennial consumers. Despite its widespread commodification in contemporary consumer society, wellness as a pursuit of growing significance presents an opportunity for novel and creative approaches to improving overall health and wellbeing. This research seeks to identify key processes that foster sustained wellness habits in young adults, with consideration paid to the role of technology in promoting or obstructing wellness goals. This survey and interview-based study makes use of participant insights to map out the relative influence of material, social, and digital factors in the transformation of mindsets, habits, and states of being towards improved overall wellness. Furthermore, this work aims to inform a design framework towards creative strategies that cultivate physical, mental, and social wellbeing while considering the pressures presented by a consumption-based wellness culture and a life increasingly online.

The foundational research question for this project can be summarized as follows:

What are the most effective mechanisms for incorporating sustained wellness habits into the lifestyles of young adults?

Additional sub-research questions to be considered in this work include those aimed at understanding the cultural context around wellness and its role in the lives of young people and the landscape of contemporary consumer society. For instance, through a combination of primary and secondary research, I also seek to address the following within the context of my topic:

How do these young adults define wellness and make a place for wellness products, services and practices in their lives?

How does the use of social media and mobile technology impact the maintenance of wellness habits and routines?

How do some young adults view their efficacy in managing their own health and wellness? What attitudes do they espouse that support or limit them in setting and achieving goals in this area?

How does the commodification of wellness in contemporary consumer society influence the attitudes and behaviors of this group of young adults?

The term “wellness,” while ubiquitous and evocative, is relatively vague. In one of the earliest uses of the term, Halbert Dunn conceptualizes wellness as “an integrated method of function which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable, within the environment where he is functioning” (1959, p.447). Dunn emphasizes not only the “freedom from illness” which constitutes wellness, but the “condition of change in which the individual moves forward, climbing toward a higher potential of functioning” (1959, p.447). An action-oriented and totalizing understanding of wellness remains pertinent, yet our concept of wellness is complicated by its dynamic associations with both modern and traditional health practices, ever emerging lifestyle philosophies and complex measures of holistic wellbeing, all existing today within a broader consumer culture. Thus, the definition of wellness I will use to ground this work includes the growing role of the wellness industry in shaping individual and collective journeys towards greater overall wellbeing. This approach considers how wellness cultures in the United States are filtered through the apparatus of consumerism, even when drawing inspiration from sources ranging from ancient tradition to revolutionary conceptions of self-care (Baker, 2022b). With this in mind, I have adapted a definition of wellness articulated by Grénman et al. (2019) in their investigation of wellness consumption as a means of self-branding. In this thesis, wellness is understood as a holistic approach to optimizing health and well-being through transformative consumption. Highlighting the transformative dimension of wellness is crucial for the work that follows, where design opportunities harness the enduring potential for revolutionized physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing despite the capitalist capture of wellness.

In the popular imagination, wellness encompasses the broad category of holistic health, sometimes paired with a focus on natural health alternatives or preventive health, and is understood as distinct from medicine (Baker, 2022b). While this project investigates what wellness means in the lives of young people today, the historical manifestations of “wellness culture” can serve to illuminate the origins of the way we think about good health and the strategies by which we achieve it. Wellness tends to imply a sense of internal balance, a notion that calls back to the medical approaches of the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates whose treatment approach involved not only the famous mantra “do no harm” but sought wellness through the balancing of the body’s four humors (Baker, 2022b). Other traditions that mirror this approach include Ayurveda, an ancient Indian healing tradition, and Traditional Chinese Medicine, both of which are practiced to this day and are enduring methodologies for achieving spiritual and bodily harmony through the balancing of internal forces (Baker, 2022b).

While these ancient examples highlight some of the underlying principles we continue to associate with wellness culture today, the trajectory of wellness in the United States can be further understood through reflection on a series of relevant social and cultural movements over the last several centuries. For instance, nineteenth century America saw the rise of “alternative medicine,” where novel and often dangerous therapies emerged, in part, from a rejection of the mainstream medical system, coinciding with the rise of new spiritual movements (Baker, 2022b). In the 20th century, the philosophy of “self-care” (Baker, 2022b, p.22) would further penetrate alternative health circles, taking a form that may be familiar to a contemporary wellness enthusiast. The Civil Rights Movement saw an emphasis on accessible, community-based care and the reclamation of the body for those marginalized by poverty, racism, and misogyny (Baker, 2022b). The notion of self-care, which still carries with it the memory of its feminist origins in contemporary holistic health circles, has persisted as a relevant term in wellness culture and has been adopted into the language of the wellness industry (Badr, 2022). Despite having origins in the civil rights and counter-cultural landscape of the mid-20th century, wellness culture today has made a decisive turn towards mainstream capitalist capture. This multi-trillion-dollar global industry largely generally concerns itself with individualistic rather than collective wellness goals, despite drawing heavily from the methods and products of traditional cultures and social movements (Badr, 2022; Baker 2022b).

With this brief history of wellness culture in mind, we can begin to solidify a theory of the role of wellness in contemporary consumer society. Wellness as an interconnected, holistic perspective on health involving piecemeal approaches to achieving healthy outcomes can be theorized within a wider postmodern tendency towards fragmentation and decentralization (Thompson & Troester, 2002). Instead of coalescing around a singular, historically grounded health practice or system of practices, contemporary wellness culture is highly adaptable, self-reflexive, and market-driven (Thompson & Troester, 2002; Badr, 2022). In addition to providing a highly customizable, individualistic approach to self-improvement and self-care, wellness consumption and practice is integrated into contemporary culture through its relationship to work and a moral imperative directed towards increased productivity and personal optimization (Smith et al., 2024).

Figure 1. The fragmentation of wellness in contemporary consumer culture

This phenomenon can be readily observed in the wellness incentives programs taken up by corporate employers as a way of investing in employee productivity (Smith et al., 2024). The corporatization of wellness culture pushes against the goal of improved holistic wellbeing and the virtues of feeling good within oneself and replaces it with the goal of achieving a more perfected and optimized self that can be captured in numerical terms.

Just as standard medical care has become increasingly entwined with neoliberal market-based mechanisms, so has the practice of self-care through the forces of both commodification and medicalization (Cavusoglu & Demirbag-Kaplan, 2017). In their analysis of wellness micro-cultures through the examination of social media posting on wellness, Cavusoglu and Demirbag-Kaplan (2017) identified two key axes upon which representations of wellness consumption online could be mapped, namely, a spiritual wellbeing to bodily wellbeing axis and a “communification” to commodification axis. Communification and commodification both describe meaning-making processes taken on by consumers, who can use the apparatus of social media to invent themselves as responsible and health-conscious consumers through engagement with wellness communities and commodities (Cavusoglu & Demirbag-Kaplan, 2017).

While community health had, at one point, anchored wellness discourses, the centering of the individual characterizes much of the wellness landscape today. This inward focus, which stresses self-optimization, manifests in several ways. This manifestation includes the transformation and idealization of the physical body to the creation of a personal brand. Sociologist Mike Featherstone asserts that consumer culture emphasizes a “self-preservationist conception of the body” (1982, p.18) which privileges strategies for combating deterioration and decay. Those strategies or routines not only allow for the body to project youth, beauty, and health, but enhance the expressive capacity of the body (Featherstone, 1982). Sociologist Roberta Sassatelli reflects further on the role of “active leisure” in molding the body into something culturally appropriate through commercialized leisure, manifesting as habit-tracking applications, personal trainers, and gym memberships (2016). The treatment of the body in this way can prove to be oppressive in its rigidity and can provide ammunition for advertisers looking to exploit consumer insecurities. Social appropriateness is similarly relevant in the relationship between wellness and pleasure, where feeling good has found itself to be a socially insufficient motivator for wellness practices (Smith et al., 2024). Under the regime of discipline and self-responsibility, we experience a “domestication of pleasure” (Smith et al., 2024, p.104) in which there exists a narrow scope of acceptability between unpleasantness and hedonism in contemporary wellness culture

While the fractured and individualistic nature of contemporary wellness culture produces certain boundaries and limitations around genuine engagement with transformative and fulfilling practices, the current paradigm also supports an expressive and creative dimension of the performance of self through self-improvement and self-optimization. This is explored by Grénman et al. (2019) in their study on wellness as a means of self-branding. In taking this perspective on wellness, the integration of a set of practices that promote balance, fitness, mindfulness, and self-improvement feed into the cultivation of an idealized goal of the “optimal, balanced self” (Grénman et al 2019, p. 472). Though the challenges presented by the commodification of wellness place serious limitations on this utopian point of view, the relationship between healthy goal setting and the imaginative performance of self provides uniquely creative opportunities to promote personal transformation.

As touched upon earlier, the role of digital media and technology, and especially social media, in creating the fragmented wellness landscape cannot be overstated. One mechanism by which it profoundly influences sociocultural perceptions of the body is through the proliferation of images. Though predating the advent of the modern internet, this passage from Featherstone (1982) distills the immense impact of these images:

…with regard to the proliferation of images which daily assault the individual within consumer culture, it should be emphasized again that these images do not merely serve to stimulate the false needs fostered onto the individual. Part of the strength of consumer culture comes from its ability to harness and channel genuine bodily needs and desires, albeit for health, longevity, sexual fulfillment, youth and beauty represent a reified entrapment of transhistorical human longings within distorted forms (p. 30)

In this dynamic, image-centered and consumption-fueled world, influencers and microcelebrities not only sell their highly aestheticized, idealized lifestyles but a piece of themselves through the uniquely intimate relationship they cultivate with their audiences (Baker, 2022b; Spulveda et al., 2025).

These examples of fragmentation and the co-option of the wellness demonstrate how contemporary wellness culture is rife with contradiction. Social scientists have sought to better understand how individuals navigate these contradictions when approaching their own holistic health and strategies towards improved wellbeing. In a qualitative interview-based study conducted by communications researcher Colleen Derkatch, the concept of wellness is revealed to be self-contradictory, rendering it a moving target for definition and as a foundation for theory (2018). Derkatch suggests that the way wellness and wellness-oriented habits of consumption are conceptualized and discussed sets up two opposing logics, one of restoration and one of enhancement. In her view, this opposition perpetuates the cycles of consumption that prop up the wellness industry (Derkatch, 2018). Opposition does so by promising both a restoration of basic markers of health and enhancement above and beyond the standards and frameworks of mainstream medicine. Navigating these opposing logics might serve as a foundation for the goal setting strategies of those seeking improved wellbeing as they shape the expression of wellness advice online.

Young adults are in a unique position as wellness consumers, in part due to their exposure en masse to the broader wellness industry, amplified by content sharing on social media platforms (Segel & Hatami, 2024). This is where information on physical and mental optimization proliferates, condensed into digestible pieces of “content”. The consumption of short-form content at a dizzying pace leaves young adults confronting the influence of the digital world and its consequences more than other age groups. This condition shapes the wellness concerns of young people, particularly around social media use and access to information.

For the vast majority of young adults, social media is a fixture of everyday life. In a survey of 14 to 22-year-olds conducted in 2018, more than 9 out of 10 respondents reported using social media, including 17% who say they use it “almost constantly” and 54% who log onto social media platforms multiple times a day (Rideout & Fox, 2018). The monumental role of the digital sphere in the everyday lives of young people is a double-edged sword, contributing both uniquely modern problems and technologically enabled solutions in the realm of health and wellness.

The proliferation of wellness advice, recommendations and trends through the internet and social media is indicative of this ambivalence. The internet is a virtually endless resource for the exploration of wellness advice and information. According to a nationwide survey of teens and young adults, 87% say they have gone online for health information (Rideout & Fox, 2018). A large proportion of those searches are in the realm of physical health, namely fitness (63%) and nutrition (52%), while many young adults also reported using the internet to access content related to mental wellbeing (59%) (Rideout & Fox, 2018). The endless availability of wellness resources online comes with considerable risk, as there is often no guarantee of accuracy and misinformation is proliferated with ease (Lee & Worthy, 2021). These networks of information can grow insidious, as exemplified by the weaponization of alternative health discourses towards the conspiratorial thinking and far-right extremism that emerged prominently during the COVID-19 pandemic (Baker, 2022a).

The demonstrable harm caused by wellness culture through misinformation campaigns like those orchestrated by alternative health influencers in the COVID-19 era should be cause for skepticism when approaching health and wellness information and communities online. However, the weaponization of wellness discourse that tempts consumers with an illusion of agency and the very real possibility for personal transformation through improved self-efficacy should not be falsely equated. After all, wellness practices have existed for millennia, and while many have since been decoupled from their original context, for better or worse, the internet has provided democratized access to those practices in a way that cannot be ignored. Of course, the values and lifestyle philosophies that consumers pair with their increased access to information is significant. In a qualitative study of young adult’s perceptions of a good life conducted by Grenman et al. (2022), these values are shown to be quite encouraging, with young adults expressing a desire for a “eudaimonic-oriented life” (Grenman et al., 2022, p.1) where moderation, self-discovery and concern for sustainability in consumption practices are paramount. Strategies for maintaining a strong commitment to wellness might take into consideration these value systems by prioritizing self-reflection over runaway consumption

Beyond the merits and challenges of the online wellness landscape, consumers that engage with the products, practices and philosophies of contemporary wellness culture are faced with additional tensions and contradictions surrounding consumption. Among young adults, that tension may come in the form of concerns around sustainability and environmental collapse coming in conflict with the very modern desire to distinguish oneself through lifestyle choices and self-expression (Grénman et al, 2022; Grénman et al 2019). However bleak the decoupling of wellness culture from the endless cycle of consumption may seem, there are creative avenues through which designers and consumers alike can rethink engagement with preventative and holistic health, focusing in and facilitating practices that enhance wellbeing through creative and social processes.

Despite the broad commodification and fragmentation of wellness products and services in contemporary society, potential exists for consumers to engage in decommoditization, a process described by sociologist Roberta Sassatelli in which commodities take on new meaning by way of ritual, social and creative reimagining (2007).

Decommoditizing mechanisms might be harnessed by designers to generate effective, affordable, and sustainable wellness interventions that break the cycle of endless consumption - prioritizing the holistic health and wellbeing of consumers by allowing them to adopt wellness rituals and routines into their lives on their own terms.

The “serial intimacy” (p.196)brought about through the process of collecting, sacralization through engagement in ritual, the affirmation of social bonds through gift-giving, and creative personalization of commodities are all examples of decommoditization (Sassatelli, 2007). Considering these mechanisms and their potential within the wellness space, we can consider new possibilities for addressing the barriers to achieving wellness goals in young adults, including cost, mindset, and the endless distractions of the attention economy.

The imaginative reframing of wellness through the lens of personalized transformation calls back to the original conceptualization of wellness by Halbert Dunn. His seminal article highlights the importance of both self-efficacy and imagination in wellness problem-solving, where the wellness journey, a “condition of change” (p.447) is made possible by self-discovery, self-assurance, and a willingness to explore the possibilities when it comes to meeting individual and collective needs (Dunn, 1959). A consumption framework that dictates those needs and provides solutions without the imaginative or creative input of those hoping to improve their overall wellbeing is destined to fall short.