Reader’s Guide

This lookbook offers a glance at the tools and methods used throughout an Emotion-Centered Design (ECD) practice. The contents vary from tools and methods for Materializing emotions to illustrating emotional journeys.

This lookbook is curated by the research collective, Matter–Mind Studio, with the intention to shed light on a diversity of tools crafted for designing for emotion.

Produced and co-authored by Lillian Tong and Myriam Diatta
Illustrated by Myriam Diatta

Words from Matter–Mind Studio

We put together this lookbook featuring Tools for Emotion-Centered Design to share some of what we do throughout our process of working with people. Developing them is at the core of our work with interdisciplinary artists and new tech product companies to cultural institutions and public health organizations. We’ve put this lookbook together with the intention to share some of what we’ve iterated on over the years. The other tools and methods we use that are not included here are more traditional research and strategy tools stemming from service design, ethnographic research, speculative design, and systems thinking.

Some of what you’ll find are methods and tools created, tested, and used by Matter–Mind Studio. Some are adapted to our style of working from choreographers, healers, educators, practitioners on leadership development, meditation teachers, researchers in the healthcare field and designers we admire. Of the folks we’ve learned from that are featured here, individuals who identify as Black, Brown, and/or People of Color and women are represented. This practice of representing individual people and centuries old practices is something we continue to work at every day.

It’s an important ethic for us to make space for and make visible exactly whose wisdom we choose to learn from. We thank each of these individuals.

Matter–Mind Studio

Who is the lookbook for?

This lookbook is for anyone who wants to get to know Emotion-Centered tools and approaches. You might be a program manager at a community program or a director of a product company, for instance. You might know about Matter–Mind Studio but want to get a taste for what some of the work looks like. You may also be a design student or a fellow researcher looking to explore more ways of working.

How to Navigate the Lookbook

The ECD tools in this publication come in various formats including frameworks, artifacts and activities. They’re divided into seven categories based on its purpose:

1. to uncover: creating a space for people to unearth their tacit knowledge and beliefs
2. to materialize: providing a framework for people to externalize and make tangible how they feel
3. to synthesize: translating research findings into emotional insights
4. to illustrate: visualizing emotional insights
5. to relate: supporting people to open up and engage with the space and others
6. to measure: evaluating and measuring qualitative outcomes
7. to maintain: sustaining newly introduced services, established interventions and organizational structures

Each tool is introduced with:

• a summary
• a use case project that shows what it looks like in action
• its purpose
• its outcome and impact
• state(s) of mind it cultivates for the individual participating
• the level of difficulty to carry it out for the facilitator
• time it’s likely to take
• its source*

*Some of the tools are original ideas from Matter-Mind Studio (MMS); some of them are adapted or borrowed from other sources.

What matters most when it comes to practicing Emotion-Centered Design with participants?

Because many of the ECD tools involve facilitation, how those tools are carried out by an individual is as important as what those tools are. Here’s some of what we believe in:

• Always put people before the work — See participants as complex individuals rather than an information source. That means appreciating they are the experts of their experience and must be treated as such. It means putting your beliefs and ego in the background. That’s in terms of your attitude, what you do, and what and how much you say.
• Show up with your true self — There’s no one standard style for practicing ECD; when you care enough, work is personal. That means your sincerity is the magic. People can easily sense how comfortable, honest, transparent, and open you and your team are. That affects how much you’re trusted.
• Allow for ambiguities — Tools and methodologies should always be adapted to specific contexts not the other way around. Be alert to sense if an exercise isn’t working for someone and be ready to improvise changes in your plan.
• Be aware of who you are in the room — Establish the ability to sense how each individual you’re working with is reading you and how your presence affects them. Are you in a position of power? How are you carrying out or counteracting that in your body language, the configuration of the room and your words? Are you seen as a friend, a colleague, a threat, a teacher, their boss’s buddy, a mentor, or a stranger? And the big question, ‘Should you be there in the first place?’ Be reflexive.

How can I be part of it?

This collection of ECD Tools is continuously growing. Submit this form if you’d like to have your emotion-focused method(s) featured here. Thank you!