Project Context
Problem
Teachers lack the necessary resources to help students academically excel while simultaneously being tasked with managing the physical safety and mental well-being of a wide range of students.
We began the Design Thinking process with the following premise – “How might we help increase the physical safety of students involved with direct student services in low resource and under-served classrooms?”
Solution
To answer our research question, we conducted unstructured and semi-structured interviews, auto-ethnography, participatory research, contextual inquiry, and in-person classroom observations with elementary school staff and teachers who interact with direct student services.
Through iterative research and design, we rapidly developed our prototype to facilitate conversations between parents and children about how to identify and deal with emotions. The prototype served as a tactile vessel for counselor-supplied information.
Audience
Elementary School Teachers
Parents of young children
UW Professor
Project Type
Graduate School
Constraints
Design Prompt
Time Frame
Eight Weeks
My Role
User Researcher
User Experience Designer
Product Designer
Project Manager
Team
Three UW HCDE graduate students
Project Breakdown
01
Problem Context
Elementary Schools are overcrowded and understaffed.
Teachers lack the necessary resources to help students academically excel while simultaneously being tasked with managing the physical safety and mental well-being of a wide range of students.
Figure 1: For our research and design project, our team conducted in-person classroom observations at an elementary school. The school we visited had a Turn Around Center which provides students with different calming tools such as dimmed lights or a quiet space to relax. This direct student service provides students with some extra support outside of the classroom.
02
Research Process
We began the Design Thinking process with the following premise – “How might we help increase the physical safety of students involved with direct student services in low resource and under-served classrooms?”
To answer our research question, our team conducted unstructured and semi-structured interviews, auto-ethnography, participatory research, contextual inquiry, and in-person classroom observations with our initial target users; elementary school staff and teachers interacting with direct student services.
Synthesis
After conducting our research, we found common themes across participant data. The majority of our participants identified elementary school students’ inability to recognize and regulate their emotions as a huge safety concern. Physical safety wasn’t as big of an issue as we originally thought. Instead, most teachers and staff expressed concern about students’ emotional regulation and the need to involve parents in the solution. The majority of our participants identified elementary school students’ inability to recognize and regulate their emotions as an urgent safety concern.
Before coming up with possible solutions to the design question, our team utilized various design processes to help identify and reframe essential components. For example, we used the process “Scenario Mapping” to better understand how a future solution might fit our users’ workflow.
These processes helped narrow our team’s scope by updating our design question and design requirements.
Figure 2: We used the method Scenario Mapping to help our team understand the gap in user interactions.
03
Design
With our updated design requirements and question in mind, we had a group sketching session with each of us, producing six solution sketches. We then used a feasibility-viability matrix to identify our top three most viable and feasible solution ideas.
Our team decided to prototype an emotion identification tool with a tactile “Pull” component that could be used by parents and children to facilitate conversations about how to name and deal with emotions.
Design Question
“How might we design a tool that helps counselors engage parents in addressing their students’ emotional health?”
Design Requirements
- The solution should encourage parent engagement regularly.
- The tool should create a dialogue between parents and children about emotional regulation.
- The solution should not be cost-prohibitive, as it should be designed for users with varying levels of income.
Prototype Design
Feature 1: Emotion Identifiers
- Each face represents a different emotion and is attached to a string that hangs out of the box. Once a user identifies their feelings, they pull on that string.
Feature 2: Elastic Bands
- Bands are attached to the end of the string to create resistance when users pull on the emotional identifier from the other side. Hidden inside the box are cards attached to strings.
Feature 3: Emotional Prompt Card
- When a participant pulls on the string, their Emotional Prompt card is revealed, and once they let go, it will promptly get tucked back inside.
Figure 3: Our prototype served as a tactile vessel for counselor supplied information. It was to be used by parents and children to facilitate conversations about how to identify and manage one's emotions. We conducted usability testing on our prototype with parents and school counselors.
04
Deliverable
Once we developed a prototype that addressed our research and design questions, we then conducted usability testing with several stakeholders, which included two separate user groups: parents and counselors.
Based on our user feedback, I iterated the final prototype design to include the following changes:
- Personified the prototype.
- Adjusted the elasticity of the bands to make them easier to pull.
- Added visual elements with icons to the prompt card instructions.
- Placed the cards in plastic holders that created a pathway of step-by-step prompts and allowed the users to swap out the content.
Outcome
In the end, the project was a success. The professor who teaches the course regularly uses our project as a successful example of the design thinking process. Also, an article about our project was published in a UW design magazine.
Lastly, the prototype design was positively received by our target audience, the counselors and parents, who appreciated its tactile nature. As one counselor stated:
“I (would) love (to use your) tool to help parents focus on healthily helping their kid process emotions at home.”
Reception
Parents liked the tactile nature of the prototype. They thought this might help establish a healthy mental path for their child to remember for the future. Parents suggested that their child get some reward for interacting with the prototype and were concerned that without this, the older children would memorize the cards and would not want to communicate with the prototype. Both the counselors and parents requested a more extensive array of emotions than we presented on the prototype. The counselors found the interaction to be “fun” and “novel.” They thought this would translate into children using the prototype more often.
Future Iterations
- Explore the possibility of integrating technology and designing of accessibility.
- Turn the interaction into a game — make positive emotions the end goal, and provide rewards when the child reaches that goal.
- Create more negative emotional strings to help the children deal with harder feelings.
- Test product with children & parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
