As designers, where do we truly find happiness?

This article features a bunch of recent works by designers that are said to be “pleasing”, or make us happy. It seems like just as futile of an attempt at exploring happiness as any other one. This has been such a trend in design themes, but not so much in art. Stefan Sagmeister focuses on exploring happiness in The Happy Show, which is an exhibition dedicated to the understanding of what makes us enjoy certain things. It features bright yellow walls smothered with infographics based off of recent studies, and endless interactivity.
There is a new concept that Art and Design have evolved into the same. However this interest in exploring happiness distinguishes the two in a big way. When have we not seen this topic explored in science or even technology? Even better, when have we ever seen this in fine art?
The understanding that happiness means the same thing to all of us, whether we are designers, artists or scientists, is false. Trying to develop universal truths about happiness will most likely not be successful.
In this article, there are no designed objects that are out of the ordinary. A book, a chair, a vase, etc. They are all purposeful and functional in their designs, but the writer finds aesthetic pleasure in each of them. Maybe you will too! It’s a pretty well-written article after all. Why is it then, that after reading I am still left wondering more about what happiness is supposed to even be?
As designers, how can we design for happiness? Is it a matter of being happy while designing? Where and when does this magic happen? The designed objects that this writer has chosen do not necessarily please me. The bias in this article is frustrating and barely legitimate rather than inspiring, because happiness is a topic that is not based off of anything close to objectivity. You could argue that science offers some studies that contribute to the greater investigation of happiness, but as a whole it is simply too subjective to form any real truths from this type of data.
This article may be fun for someone that is not aggressively pursuing design, but for a designer, these articles – regarding aesthetic pleasure and happiness – are simply not helpful. Designers may want to subvert the concept of happiness, rather than focusing on it head-on. At least in my experiences, happiness is a thing that happens exclusively while other things are happening. In the meantime, diving into deeper more substantial areas of interest may be a quicker and less maddening path to gaining true pleasure from design.