This article introduces the concept of comfort websites: personalized digital spaces designed to support emotional growth, self-awareness, and well-being. What follows is a collection of early observations, design principles, and hypotheses that have yet to be formally tested. While the framework is still evolving, three projects are presented as case studies to explore what this emerging form of design might look like in practice:
There are a few assumptions that may or may not be true, but at least feel true:
In some sense, most people are looking for technological advancement, a cure for a disease, a new way of researching science, AGI etc., which isn’t wrong, but there should be more investment in looking at the cognitive emotional distortions we have that limit those technological advancements. When you clear people of their internalized self-hatred and promote self-awareness, we could potentially have more “exceptional” people in the field who are hypercreative rather than the small population of super geniuses and prodigies that we have today. A ton of people learn to hate/dislike themselves at a very young age and that hinders learning and development. Although unfalsifiable, I think it is easier to hate yourself than it is to like yourself.
Arguably, some of the biggest scientific breakthroughs or highly-esteemed art pieces are from pain and suffering, but who is to say that if conditions were different or better it wouldn’t be an even better breakthrough? Yann LeCun and Demis Hassabis are arguing if human intelligence is general or not but most people aren’t even self-aware yet. The debate about what intelligence is if we’ve never seen what humans are capable of when most people become self-aware doesn’t seem like it’ll have a clear answer until we see more people become self-aware. Although self-awareness is a spectrum, how do we actually measure that or determine that threshold remains unknown.
We democratized knowledge where you can learn anything you want online by yourself and social media and the internet still ended up as a toxic cesspool of clickbait, ragebait, and negative content instead of a world full of highly academically intelligent deep thinkers. The psychological limitations we have polluted and corrupted an otherwise beautiful piece of technological advancement (a.k.a. the internet). Same with the smartphone, we have mini-computers in our pockets and instead it created an anxiety crisis and doomscrolling behaviors. This same psychological pollution has shown itself with AI systems too. If we keep focusing on external solutions, the internal wounds will corrupt them and vice versa. We almost always seem to overinvest in external solutions because those results are more “visible” and let the internal solutions figure themselves out. What if we balanced the investment or tried it the other way around?
Therefore, we can expect that “design for healing” to be more common in the upcoming years as it combats all of the aforementioned problems (obviously to varying degrees for each problem).
A 2D/3D artist or designer makes anyone feel anything. They design for feeling. A comfort website is tailored specifically to you (at least partially) and created by, created by, or in collaboration with, someone who cares about you and is designed for healing (and by nature of that also partially designing for irrelevance and agency). Something you can revisit like a handwritten letter during hard times. A comfort website is very similar to an emotional support animal (a.k.a. ESA or comfort animal) or comfort food. It’s a website that can be revisited when emotional support is needed such as easing negative emotions (e.g. anxiety and stress). Unlike comfort animals though, using a comfort website may be intentionally uncomfortable (at least for a small period of time; more on this later).
Designing to “heal” could look like the following in two (hypothetical) future roles:
First would be the Digital Therapeutic Environments Therapist (clinical) – a mental health professional (like a therapist) who designs and develops a personalized 3D custom “comfort website” for their client along with other therapeutic methods. The website itself is an intervention method. This needs research and evidence to be put into practice, but it has parts worth addressing or can be incorporated into the other role in the next paragraph.
Second would be the Comfort Website Artist/Therapeutic Web Engineer (non-clinical) – a member of a community or an employee who creates comfort websites. This role is not clinical like the other and is more like a developer and/or artist who understands therapeutic principles rather than has formal certifications. Similar to how a design engineer might not have been trained in code and/or design but bridge that gap after learning on the job and intuitively picking up concepts. You may already have been doing what a comfort website creator’s job might be at one point in your life without realizing it. For example, if you’ve ever built or wanted to build with the intention of connecting with someone or making someone happy/safe.
These roles weren’t really practical before AI because therapy/web dev itself is a gruelling job but new roles are “supposed to” emerge from AI reducing grunt work. The roles above (I assume) are to be two of them in upcoming years or at the very least worth looking into. These roles can help fill the modern emotional void by making work feel meaningful through promoting well-being in others. Additionally, you’ve probably already made a “comfort website” before or something similar, but there was just no clear terminology for it.
This article will build a case for why we should further investigate comfort websites, explain what they are, and suggest some comfort/hospitality design principles that can apply in other technology fields beyond the mental health domain.
The idea of a “comfort website” is not novel. In fact, there is a trend called the “cozy web” that focuses on creating websites designed for emotional intimacy and comfort away from all the noise of mainstream attention-grabbing websites which Maggie Appleton writes about. Similarly, games designed for emotional regulation have also been around for a long time.
The issue is that these existing digital mental health focused initiatives are often scattered and left to be forgotten because they lack definite terminology. Because there is no terminology, we can sometimes struggle to fully process an emotion, this is known as hypocognition.
For example, if you make a cool website, it might make someone happy and excited about the web even if it never gets “sold.” However, given that it is never used by the creator, the emotional impact of said website is often eventually dismissed by the person who was happy about it. In their eyes, because the creator did not sell it, there is no “practical” use case for it. By giving a set of processing words/terms to this unlabeled snippet, we can hopefully show the “practicality” through emotional well-being. In other words, the author will feel more satisfied knowing they created something for fun and to help others laugh and the recipient will understand that intention more clearly and process that emotion.
In other words, my intuition is because people already revisit their own portfolio websites constantly, wouldn’t they revisit a gifted one just as often? But instead of calling it a portfolio, why don’t we just categorize that as like a “holding environment” or what I call a “comfort website.”
We could probably suggest some potential success metrics for comfort websites to aim for:
Mental health professionals and non-mental health professionals have used technology in a plethora of ways to help treat or heal mental health issues in patients and their communities (e.g. VR/AR/mobile apps). While effectiveness is widely dependent on the individual, there’s a reason many of them struggle to support people.
If we take a look at self-treatment through a meditation app or an emotional intelligence self-reflection app, it struggles to close the gap of having another person caring about you which is a core need in many therapeutic treatments (known as therapeutic alliance). In fact, even with a therapist; having a patient trust that the therapist actually cares about them is a hurdle in itself. Mood trackers and journaling apps/methods etc. also struggle with this. To someone highly cynical, these can feel like meaningless homework and that a therapist is repeatedly scheduling sessions to keep the patient’s money as an income stream. In some sense, it’s always too clinical.
Having a developed comfort website by a caregiver or friend is potentially one method to overcome a cynical hurdle especially if the website accurately reflects the other person’s inner world. Of course, we would need research to confirm this.
Trends like the cozy web share similar issues. For example, The Nicest Place on The Internet, a website where you can cycle through several people doing virtual hugs and smiling, can be seen as performative by cynics. Also, again, they’re generalized for everyone which lacks having someone who cares about you specifically.
When it comes to VR/AR/XR intervention methods, the problems are vast, the cost of equipment is expensive, it’s inconvenient (e.g. motion sickness, neck pain), and it lacks portability and accessibility to intervene in more spontaneous crisis moments. A website is simply a URL and internet connection away.
There are several other methods we could look at through the digital therapeutics and wellness app lens with chatbots/AI companions/online forums etc. but they all suffer from high attrition rates which comfort websites aim to alleviate by being “radically” personalized. Instead of bringing users to the caregivers’ world, what if we take the solution to them instead. The website itself is an intervention that also combines existing interventions.
That’s not to say comfort websites replace anything, they are simply another potential method in a wide range of therapeutic and/or community building methods and it might be more effective than other methods depending on an individual.
Another upside with comfort websites is that, unlike other digital forms of therapy, websites can be designed to be publicly shareable and immediately resonate with others who share their comfort website “aesthetic” or “theme” just like sharing a comfort food or comfort animal with someone else. It’s not much different than visiting a cafe or space that has a pet animal that you’ve come to love and see, except comfort animals and pets are often too expensive for some people to maintain.
In the event an individual or patient wants to participate in the website-building process, many psychological principles are at play that can potentially improve their condition.
First, avoidance often leads to anxiety – working with a comfort website creator towards a shared goal can help put things into motion for an individual. It feels like a team working together rather than a client-patient relationship. It is important to have boundaries here in a clinical setting as we don’t want to encourage friendships between mental health professionals and clients. In a non-clinical setting this is different and friendships may form here. This taps into behavioral activation, which suggests you have to start something first for the motivation to come, not wait for the motivation.
Second, feelings of achievement and celebrating wins – Many people growing up were shown conditional love where only good grades were praised or appreciated. Balancing a child’s inherent worth as a person separate from their accomplishments is a difficult task and which can develop into conditional self-worth in adulthood. Building one’s own website can play into self-determination theory, where successful creation leads to more creation, savoring positive psychology where one celebrates their own accomplishments to maintain a healthy self-esteem, and art therapy processing negative or complex emotions through self-expression and externalizing one’s inner world.
Interestingly, both these two benefits also apply to the caregiver who created the website themselves, not just the receiver.
Comfort websites, from an organizational psychology perspective, are something that needs to be developed significantly. Work environments like big tech companies are very different from clinical settings, community building events, or personal/closer relationships where comfort websites would likely shine. Comfort websites are unlikely to be a solution in this area.
While there is some evidence to suggest that onsite meetups and other team-building exercises can create a healthy work environment, these solutions don’t solve the issue that there is a power differential between employer and employee.
In closer-knit or emotionally mature work environments, comfort websites could exist as an alternate solution to a well-loved office pet or digital office character/bot, although it’s not clear at the moment how much benefit it would add to create a healthy work environment.
Thought logs, meditation apps, these are all existing solutions to help reduce negative emotions that can be translated into a comfort website too. It’s less about novelty, and more of a frame of mind that shapes different outcomes and design processes compared to thinking about websites as marketing products.
Regardless though, there are some underlying principles that make this new medium more effective if followed. Feel free to deviate from them accordingly depending on individual needs.
Humans have a tendency to simplify things to reduce cognitive load and conserve energy, unfortunately, this leads to things like negative thought spirals where people affirm that they are defective in some way, e.g. “I’m a bad designer, I’m a bad designer, other people are special and I’m not.”
One of the best ways to combat this one-dimensional or black and white thinking is by making the website multi-dimensional, whether through different themes/art styles/seasons/places etc. Multi-dimensionality tries to reflect and invoke a wide range of different emotions, trying to break specific emotional loops that may consume someone.
Framing the experience as a journey is also important because, again, it’s easy to get stuck in patterns where it feels like life is always the same. You never really know when you’re in a down moment or up moment, how long it’ll last and where it will take you, so creating a journey narrative keeps the curiosity alive rather than the anxiety when it comes to the future.
Growth narratives and truisms hardly ever work on their own. You watch an inspirational video or hear a truism/quote like “the people who mind don’t matter and the people who matter don’t mind” or “don’t worry about things you can’t change” but your brain still doesn’t follow the generic “good advice.”
Despite this, truisms and growth narratives are important to include because it acts like reassurance and reframes negative thoughts in many individuals. In some sense, someone has to be “ready” before a quote starts making sense, so it’s important to have them available and there when needed.
Some truisms might hit harder or not depending on where someone is along their emotional growth journey, so different framings of the same concept should be explored as well. You’ll notice in both papercraft websites growth narratives about how they turn workplace abuse into a mission of healing others, suggesting that past abuse is not a reflection of themselves and they have agency to grow from it and fight back.
Using personal and nostalgic objects are ways to reflect someone’s internal world back to them. It creates a non-judgmental space and shows intentionality when done correctly. In the image below, you can see characters from Mario, Pokémon, Genshin Impact, and Finding Nemo. These are personalized to someone who values all four of these IPs.
In terms of nostalgic objects, it could be a wide range of things like paper, sticks, foods, etc. For the papercraft websites they were intended to reflect common childhood arts and crafts many people used to do.
Growth doesn’t have to be permanently dark or deep. Including comedic cliches keeps the air light and shows that it is important to be playful and that you don’t have to lose that part of yourself while growing. You’ll see these comedic cliches not just the art but throughout the websites like Mr. Panda’s ghost next to the words “I won’t ghost you” or the Rule of Three with the gnomes.
Both Mr. Panda and Aimee change their outfit depending on the scene. Make sure when applying the multi-dimensional principles we are aware of the context-switching as it shows a clear sense of intentionality.
Paper wasn’t just used because it was nostalgic, it was also used to show simplicity which makes it feel like it’s achievable rather than intimidating. There is a reason low-poly 3D artists often garner more attention than very highly detailed and expert level art. This also happens in the “2D” illustration world as well, for example Pusheen has dominated the internet with a relatively simple art style.
Having things look “too advanced” may make the comfort website feel like a “flex” or “masterpiece” rather than something designed for their comfort, although again, this is up to an individual.
Speaking of design style too, typically “comfort” should be something that invokes innocence/cuteness, but I could also see how a horror-like website could also be comforting or in some aspect depending on where someone is mentally or emotionally. For example, use it as a way to “combat” negative thoughts. The website can always change at a later time if needed.
Both websites talk about workplace abuse (a difficult topic to talk about) while the art style is the complete opposite of what you might expect the content to be about. Use juxtaposition when trying to bring in uncomfortable topics to keep a balance between light and dark. There should be enough cognitive dissonance to encourage self-reflection.
Life is unpredictable, so highlight in the website somewhere. For example in Aimee’s website there is a question mark at the end of the roadmap.
Thinking in terms of fantasy or being a bit “delusional” can potentially help build confidence in one’s own ideas rather than succumb to self-doubt. Including elements that adhere to a narrative of fantasy and aspiration could potentially trigger these emotions. In Aimee’s website it is the act of riding a crane.
In John and Patricia’s website, I use the Up house a movie about loss, grief, and processing difficult emotions in order to make dense clinical stuff feel less heavy. Of course, using IP is probably not ideal, but when it comes to the gray area of “fan art” I think it would be appreciated rather than unethical. Of course, this should be done on a case-by-case basis.
I think using a digital twin of a real place or at least an idealized one can act like a goal or “reason” per se to return. As mentioned earlier, people already revisit their own portfolios several times. If we can evoke that same kind of behavior with some sort of design then it could help with attrition.
Below is some preliminary data about comfort websites. The data was a convenience sample and is not representative of an ideal target population, it was an 80% men to 20% women ratio with an average age of around 30 years old and employed in the tech industry. While not shown, music/sounds were mentioned repeatedly as one of the largest factors of making a website feel therapeutic.
Also, declared intent (which this survey finds is high) versus actual behavior over a longitudinal study would need to be conducted in the future, because who wouldn’t want a 3D website created for them (LOL). It’s also important to note that, like other mental health solutions, many participants said they would feel embarrassed to show it to someone else. Perhaps the design can help alleviate this concern.
Like other interventions/solutions, comfort websites have limitations and are a case-by-case solution, not everyone experiencing the problems listed in this article should use a comfort website. Now let’s take a look at some potential limitations of comfort websites and areas that need more research.
1. Financial Cost – There needs to be a large body of work and research that suggests comfort websites help, otherwise it is hard to justify spending money on them, this goes for both the clinical and non-clinical roles. No further comment can be made at this time regarding financial costs.
2. Escapism/Over-reliance – Like all comforting environment solutions, it’s important to be aware that these websites could be used to avoid certain situations rather than face them. This is probably less of a factor compared to VR headset therapeutic solutions or video games, but it is something to flag and look into.
3. Accessibility – Not everyone has a decent device that can run 3D experiences, so it’s important to adjust accordingly. In many instances, those who don’t have artsy backgrounds could find “lower quality” art just as effective as “higher quality” art. Additionally, people with disabilities like visual impairments may inform design choices (e.g. using noise therapy, screen readers, and haptic feedback).
4. Training Programs – We would be training a therapist, 3D artist, and developer as a single role, which sounds ambitious, but with the development of AI I feel like this issue will resolve (at least somewhat partially) or there will be enough abstractions by the time it’s fully viable. This entire article’s premise is that this role will pop up specifically because of AI advancement.
5. Designing for irrelevance is designing for agency – Why would we create something that will be irrelevant later? I think designing for irrelevance is more of designing to respect a person’s agency and by nature of promoting one’s growth they will naturally want to come back later. For example, if you’re a good teacher, your student will naturally come back and thank you and possibly bring your opportunities as well. Right now everything is focused on grabbing attention (even apps that are designed to help you), but what happens when there’s too much attention grabbing? People need to trust one another and that shows through emotional depth as well as feelings of genuine support. I believe designing for irrelevance (with the intention of emotionally growing an individual) isn’t naive. Of course, how to do this successfully with a website is hard to say and needs future research.
6. Data and Privacy Concerns – Of course, if there are features like journaling, how do we ensure privacy on the web.
7. Using technology and another screen for mental health seems counterintuitive – I think this depends on the person. Yes, ideally we shouldn’t use more screen time to help with mental health but it’s a replacement for “bad “worse” screen time rather than additional screen time. How to control for this needs to be further researched.
While AI is causing a lot of disruption, it also enables many people to expand their skills and or amplify their existing skills and use them in novel ways to help others. Designing for healing seems to be a natural extension of designing for feeling/marketing purposes and the societal trends do suggest that designing for healing is likely to grow in the future.
While comfort websites become a thing or not, the future is not known, but I am proposing it as there is a huge gap between the investment we have in external solutions compared to internal solutions for humanity’s problems.
I know the painful irony of having to be defensive, justifying, and establish a “framework” for what otherwise should be emotional sincerity, but it’s precisely the systems we have that force this scaffolding.
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