Emotional Design for Learning
Co-Authored by Lillian Tong and Myriam Doremy Diatta
Better World by Design is an initiative at Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design that celebrates interdisciplinary collaboration between designers, educators, innovators, and learners. A few months ago, we were invited to speak at Better World by Design conference about Emotion-Centered Design. In addition to our lecture and panel discussion, we pushed ourselves to offer more: How can we create an experience at the conference that embodies what we preach?
We focused on providing conference organizers with a clear illustration of participants’ learning experience during their time at lectures and workshops.
Here, we write about people’s needs when it comes to learning, show you a physical space we designed for the Better World by Design conference, and share the outcome of the space told through first-person stories.
People Need Room to Learn
Before a person can embody and act on a new load of information, they need time to process–be it in any classroom, board meeting, museum, conversation between friends, or hospital room. It’s important to build in time for this, as it’s an extremely rich part of the learning and change process.
When a person attends a conference, for instance, and exposes themselves to an abundance of knowledge, too often they focus on the intellectual insights and practical advice. There’s little room designed for conference-goers to internalize the learnings, and reflect on what they mean to them personally and professionally. Further, when they get to the end of the day of a series of lectures and workshops at a conference, it’s not easy to clearly articulate personal reflections to someone on the spot. It’s a real challenge for a staff member or researcher trying to find ways to improve the conference.
“A lot of people have this feeling of being overwhelmed from all the information that they’re excited about, but they don’t know where to put it in [their] brain.” — Emma, Better World x Design 2017 Conference attendee
The powerful reflections that allow knowledge to sink in and change our own behaviors are deeply emotional.
When talking about the relationship between emotion and learning, Dr. Immordino-Yang, an neuroscientist at the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California, points out in an article on New York Times:
“Emotion is essential to learning, and should not be underestimated or misunderstood as a trend, or as merely the “E” in “SEL,” or social-emotional learning. Emotion is where learning begins, or, as is often the case, where it ends. Put simply, “It is literally neurobiologically impossible to think deeply about things that you don’t care about.”
The Physical Emotion Booth
We designed and built a participatory booth called “Physical Emotion”. Equal parts exhibition and open call, “Physical Emotion” explores the intrinsic interconnectedness between matter and mind, and at the same time showcases the collective emotions of visitors to Better World by Design 2017. With this booth, we physically carved out the time and space for attendees to process all they’ve heard throughout the conference. Participants spent anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes making and writing at the booth.
The individuals who did participate in the booth are each able to confidently state how they take in the information, why, and name their intentions for returning back to work, school, or their personal life.
The booth was set up in the end of each day throughout the conference outside different lecture hall. There’re three steps involved: first, participants fill in the blank space on the storycard, while reflecting on their learnings and feelings; second, they create an object to represent the emotional experience; third, we take photos of their creations, which live on our online ‘Physical Emotion’ archive.
For people who didn’t have time to stop by, we created an additional exercise, where participants write a ‘Postcard to Your Future Self’ to capture the take-aways. They mark the postcard with their address and the date they want it sent back to them, we postage stamped it, and put it in the mail for them to receive it.
People Gained Clarity
Each of these audio clips include stories told by conference participants immediately after a full day of lectures and workshops. They detail what personal experience they’ve captured, what their object looks like, why they chose one material over another, and how the process of building their object drove them to find clarity.
Sanjana
Better World x Design 2017 Conference attendee
“I do feel excited and positive about that information. So the brightness of the head gives me this feeling of ‘I’ve learned, I’ve gained, I’m brighter this way. I’m sparklier this way.’ And the gold thread that interweaves through the object is in me. It’s interwoven in my actions and hopefully in the future. The lightness of that thread is all very temporary the information that you keep is all very temporary. It’s heavy with knowledge, so it’s ok that it’s tilting. ” –Sanjana
Emma
Better World x Design 2017 Conference attendee
“When I finished that lecture, I was like, wow, there are so many possibilities, but then there’s also so many questions and it’s just overwhelming to think about. How critical should I be? Or should I be careful at the same time… [At the booth], I contrasted two coins where on one, I couldn’t think of a single thing to put on there bc i was judging myself, and the other [coin], I put no thought into what I would put on there. [The object] represents me consciously thinking about how I make decisions. I can move towards a critical mindset like when I’m doing a math or engineering problem versus I can also enjoy the mindset of just playing.” –Emma
Lisa
Better World x Design 2017 Conference attendee
“We were dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Irma. I continued to take this trip [to the conference] because I needed to have some inspiration. My artwork reflects the down wires, the plywood that we put up for days and took down for days. The material reminded me of the sand where I go to the beach to get connectivity to my home town. … When I got here all I was remembering was some of the beauty, not the chaos…” –Lisa
Lisa used the booth as an opportunity to make something symbolic of the arc from leaving home, attending the conference, and sitting at this booth.
This thought exercise participants go through–putting parts together to reflect their experience at the conference–acts as a kind of HOV lane for processing large loads of information and making them actionable.
“I felt like I was creating this piece and it did feel like I was beginning to wrap together that experience [in the conference]. … I’ve put this thing together that’s symbolic of my readiness to start processing that information.” –Sanjana
Lifting the Hood: The Mechanics Behind the Process
One of the Emotion-Centered Design methodologies we use at Matter–Mind Studio, Materializing, is founded on the connection people have with objects.
People build sentimental connections to objects and particular spaces, but further, people actually think through the physical qualities objects have. By that, we’re referring to how satisfying and easy people find it to connect colors, weight, temperature, size, texture to very personal experiences.
Trying to find the “universal” color for happiness or safety, for instance, isn’t interesting or useful. What is rich and substantive is the way Materializing facilitates conversations. In the Physical Emotion Booth, a participant has to talk about their decision for choosing this texture or this composition and may debate it with someone who disagrees about why exactly, for example, the personal experience of ‘learning’ is prickly, not warm.
The written cards and stories shared by the booth’s participants at the Better World by Design conference demonstrate this level of substance and insight that would otherwise go unseen and unheard.
We thank the Better World by Design staff and participants of the Physical Emotion Booth for the care they put into their time with us.
At Matter-Mind Studio, we constantly seek opportunities to contribute our Emotion-Centered Design in various context and challenges. Drop a line or two at hello@mattermindstudio.com to start a conversation!
