Bring some
joy to your event

Request availability

Here

About Ingrid

A designer and author whose work has been called “mesmerizing” by Adam Grant, and “completely original,” by Arianna Huffington, Ingrid Fetell Lee reveals how we can harness the surprising power of our surroundings to cultivate joy, creativity, and success.

Lee’s work occupies a truly unique space, situated at the intersection between design, neuroscience, and psychology.

In her book, Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness, and as founder of the website The Aesthetics of Joy, she reveals the powerful connection between our surroundings and our emotions, and empowers people to find more joy in their lives and their work through design. In 2018, she gave the closing address at TED; her talk “Where Joy Hides and How to Find It” received a standing ovation and has been viewed more than 17 million times across channels.

Lee’s uplifting and visually stunning presentations are laced with evidence-based insights, actionable takeaways, and delightful details. She possesses a rare ability to translate between disparate fields and make them accessible and exciting to audiences at all levels of fluency with her subjects. Informed by ten years of research, Lee’s work upends the conventional wisdom about happiness and success, giving audiences not only a new perspective on the world, but also an invaluable set of tools for increasing performance, creativity, wellbeing, and resilience.

VIEW SAMPLE VIDEOS

Featured Topics

Ingrid gives regular keynotes on the connection between joy and well-being, designing for joy, and practical strategies for cultivating more joy in work and life. Drawing on her broad cross-category experience, she tailors her talks to a wide range of industries, including healthcare, education, marketing, tourism, retail, fashion, government, and technology. And with more than a decade of experience in facilitation, she excels at weaving interactive experiences into presentations at any scale. Here are a few of her featured topics:

The Secret to Creating Universally Joyful Products and Experiences

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. 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.

Putting Joy to Work

In the pursuit of business success and bottom-line results, joy is an attribute that can often seem trivial or unimportant. 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. Studies show joyful doctors make better diagnoses, joyful salespeople improve customer satisfaction, and joyful employees are up to 12% more productive. 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.

How to Create Spaces that Make People Thrive

We're often taught that our surroundings are incidental to our wellbeing, but an emerging body of research shows that the physical world can be a powerful resource to us in cultivating happier, healthier lives. For example, studies show that workers in more colorful offices are more alert, friendly, and confident than those in drab ones, that windows can speed healing, and that children progress faster in classrooms with better lighting. In this highly visual, evidence-based talk, Lee shows how organizations and individuals can use simple elements like color, light, and decor to create spaces that improve markers of physical health, reduce stress, stimulate creativity, facilitate social interaction, and of course, promote joy.

Booking

Reach out to request availability or with any questions here.

Request availability

"Testimonial"

Full bio

Ingrid Fetell Lee is a designer and author whose groundbreaking work reveals the hidden influence of our surroundings on our emotions and wellbeing. 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. Her immensely popular TED talk “Where Joy Hides and How to Find it” has been viewed more than 17 million times.

Lee has been featured as an expert on design and joy by outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Wired, Real Simple, The Atlantic, the Today Show, HGTV Magazine, and Fast Company. She has over fifteen 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. She was a founding faculty member in the Products of Design program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her design work has been exhibited at imm Cologne, Germany.

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

What's holding you back from joy? Take the quiz here.
Free Resource

Find more joy every day

Our free workbook has 5 simple strategies that will make life better right now.

You'll also receive periodic updates on new things from The Aesthetics of Joy. We respect your privacy. Unsubscribe at any time.