Helping Children Emotionally Develop: A Design Thinking Case Study About Creating A Tool To Assist Parents In Their Child’s Emotional Well-Being

This article is written by Lukas Sexton, Alison Buchanan, and Sondra Yancey, who are graduate students at the Department of Human-Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Design Problem

Design Question:

How might we help increase the physical safety of students involved with direct student services in low resource and under-served classrooms?

Design Prompt:

How might we make schools safer?

We began this process with the following premise: 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. We were particularly interested in exploring safety concerns revolving around students that need extra support in the classroom. These students access direct student services such as the Counseling Center or Occupational Therapist etc.

Objectives:

1. Conduct research to better understand the problem.
2. Design a solution in the form of a physical tool that increases the safety of elementary students accessing direct student services.
3. Test and iterate our solution into a higher fidelity prototype.

Research Questions:

1. What are the specific concerns that teachers think when a special education student is escalating behavior?
2. What are other safety concerns that teachers have?
3. What are pain points within the direct student services that create barriers for students and teachers to get help prior, during, and after escalated behavior takes place?
4. What resources are available for teachers and staff when they are feeling overwhelmed in an understaffed classroom with special education students?
5. What environmental factors lead to a child having escalated behavior?

Fig. 1: The Teaching Area of the Classroom

User Research

Students with disabilities are often given tactile toys to help them focus.

Our initial target users were elementary school staff, teachers, and students interacting with direct student services. To help answer our research questions our team conducted interviews, auto-ethnography, and in-person classroom observations. We felt that these mixed methods would give us insight into the frustrations teachers face on both a daily basis and during emergencies.

Figure 2: Research Methods Used. Autoethnographic research (in this case) is when particpants take photos to explore anecdotal and personal experiences to help answer Research and Design questions.

Phone Interview (n=2)
We interviewed a school Occupational Therapist (OT) and a Kindergarten Teacher (KT) over the phone for about 30 minutes respectively. The OT expressed frustration over classroom layouts leading to a distracting and overwhelming classroom environment for her students. She emphasized a desire to find a better way to communicate directions and lessons to students. The KT mentioned that her students with disabilities are often given tactile toys to help them focus. Both the KT and the OT expressed concerns about students in the class falling over or tripping which is especially troublesome for students who have less control of their limbs or have difficulty maneuvering due to vision issues.

Autoethnography (n=2)
Our first participant, a third-grade teacher, provided us with a written journal gathered over two days. She reported incidents of students fighting, bullying each other, throwing balls at each other, and leaving the classroom without permission. This participant expressed frustration over lacking the time or tools to manage her students adequately. A different third-grade teacher, our second participant, took photos of safety concerns on her elementary school grounds. For more details, please see Figure 3 or the Appendix.

Figure 3: This photo was gathered from Autoethnographic research. The image depicts a classroom without a door that uses a curtain for privacy but as a result leaves teachers unable to lock their doors in an emergency

In Person Interview (n=6)
In a separate school, staff discussed a variety of other safety concerns; such as student hygiene. Teachers were also concerned about students leaving through many of the exit doors and unauthorized adults entering the school. The school counselor noted that she had seen an increase in self-harm as a coping mechanism for students. She has also noticed an increase in students that do not have the skills to regulate their own emotions. She described to us the methods she uses to teach students how to name feelings, develop empathy, and self-soothe. She mentioned she wanted a “parent kit” to pass on follow-up instructions to parents. All teachers acknowledged they have a good school support system and can rely on each other for help. For example, they have a dedicated safe space classroom, also known as the “Turn Around Center (TAC),” with an open door policy that allows students to choose to ways to calm down; such as using stretchy fabric, elastic bands or a weighted blanket. Please See Figure 5 for more details.

Figure 4: Tactile tools helps calm kids.

Direct Observation (3.5 hours)
We observed a 3rd-grade classroom filled with distracted or emotionally disruptive students professionally kept on track with the lesson plan. None of the children observed that day had any escalated behavior, but if they had chosen so, they could have voluntarily visited the Turn Around Center (TAC) for a few minutes. In the TAC, we saw students enter on their own and choose a 5–10 minute activity. The teacher gave one-on-one help with a student’s work while providing positive verbal reinforcement.

Figure 5: The Turn Around Center (TAC) has different calming tools such as dimmed lights or a quiet space.

Students in the Turn Around Center calmed down using tactile tools such as stretchy fabric or elastic bands.

Redefining the Problem

After conducting our research, we triangulated our findings and 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.

Goals
Teachers and counselors noted that they teach emotional regulation frequently in counseling sessions and the classroom. Their ultimate goal is to help students learn to use these strategies on their own.

Barriers
Counselors noted that emotional regulation reaches beyond the classroom setting. Students look to their parents for guidance, but often times parents are not properly prepared to deal with their child’s emotions or are unable to regulate their own emotions. Counselors make an effort to schedule appointments with parents to provide guidance on how to address emotional health. Unfortunately, parents struggle to find the time to come to these appointments.

Needs
Counselors and teachers wanted a way to pass on their knowledge and resources to parents. They lack a tool that continuously engages parents in their child’s emotional development.

Ideation

Updated Design Question:

“How might we design a tool that helps counselors engage parents in addressing their students’ emotional health?”

Pivot
After analyzing our results, we found that physical safety wasn’t as big of an issue as we thought. Instead most teachers and staff expressed concern about student’s emotional regulation and the need to involve parents to be a part of the solution. We also found that teachers in both high and low income schools had access to a surprising amount of resources and felt supported by their community.

Figure 6: Scenario Mapping was a tool to help us understand the gap in user interactions.

Narrowing our Scope
With our ideas and insights, we formed a list of design requirements for our solution to narrow our scope. To ensure that we kept our personas in mind, we used a Value Proposition Canvas to identify our persona’s goals, pains, and gains within our problem space. We also used a Business Model Canvas to think deeper about our users, allies, and resources (see Appendix for details).

Figure 7: Value Proposition Canvas was a tool that aided us in better understanding our user needs.

Before coming up with possible solutions to the design question, our team utilized design methods to help identify and reframe essential components. We used the technique “Scenario Mapping” (Figure 6) to help us better understand how our future solution might fit into our users’ workflow. With this in mind we brainstormed with prompts to warm-up our idea generation skills; for example “What would a solution to this problem look like in the 1800’s?”

Design Requirements

1. The solution should encourage parent engagement on a regular basis.
2. The solution should create a dialogue between parents and children about emotional regulation.
3. The solution should not be cost prohibitive, as it should be designed for users with varying levels of income.

Sketching

With our design requirements in mind, we had a group sketching session. Each of us produced six sketches of a possible solution. We then used a viability- feasibility matrix to identify our top three most viable and feasible solution ideas (please see Appendix).

Figure 8: Sketch of Emotional Card Game

Parent Input

To further help us narrow down our ideas, we realized we needed to get some input from parents as they had become a more dominant stakeholder in our refined design question. We made a quick video pitching three of our top ideas to see what three parents liked and disliked about each option (see Appendix).

All three parents were enthusiastic about the emotional card game, but we discovered many similar products existed on the market already. For inspiration, we re-visited our initial user research, and as a result, we decided to explore interactions involving emotional cards and physical components incorporated together.

Figure 9: First Functioning Prototype of E.D.D.

Back to the Drawing Board

Our team had one more group sketching session and finally decided on an emotion identification tool with a tactile “Pull” component. We felt that this met the goals of all three of our personas as it serves as a vessel for counselor information, and provides an engaging, tactile experience for both parents and children. As seen in Figure 9, we created our prototype nicknamed Emotional Defintion Dude (E.D.D.).

Prototype

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 on the line when users pull on the emotional identifier from the other side.

Feature 3: Emotional Prompt Card

Hidden inside the box are cards attached to strings. 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. For this prototype version, the cards are intentionally left vague so that participants can tell us about the content they would want on the card.

Testing

Because our solution included several stakeholders, we ran usability tests with two separate user groups: parents and counselors. First, we identified our research questions then worked to answer them by conducting usability testing (see Appendix).

Figure 10: Usability Test Scenarios

Usability Research Questions

1. Is it easy for users to discover how to use this product?
2. Can users successfully access the resource cards?
3. Does the task flow make sense?
4. Is this something users would use?
5. Is this something users find valuable and engaging?
6. Wat kinds of reactions to the product are common across both user groups?
7. What kind of emotions and content would users like to see on/in this artifacts?

Figure 11: Participatory interview was a part of our user testing plan.

Counselor Testing Results
The counselors could picture parents using E.D.D. to engage with their child and discuss emotions. They were concerned about the box’s sturdiness and noted that the band resistance was too tricky. Overall the counselors found the interaction to be “fun” and “novel.” They thought this would translate into children using the prototype. Counselors requested there was a more extensive array of emotions than what we presented on the prototype.

Figure 12: Counselors test and interact with E.D.D. by pulling on the string to reveal the Emotions Card

Parent Testing Results
Parents found it natural to use this prototype. They liked the idea of physically engaging the child in an activity that might help both the parent and the child cool down at that moment. Parents used the prototype as an opportunity to gain a deeper understanding of the feelings the child had, reinforce positive behaviors, and encourage thinking about how the child’s actions affect those around them.

Figure 13: Parents were tested among their peers in focus group setting

Overall, parents liked the tactile nature of the prototype. The parents decided they would want the prototype to present a physical pathway of choices for how to handle an emotion when a string is pulled. They thought this might help establish a mental path for their child to remember for the future. Parents wanted their children to 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.

Figure 14: Throught the “Scenario Roleplay” method we had parents act interact with E.D.D. and our team as if they were engaging with their child

The parents used the prototype as an opportunity to:

Gain a depper understanding of the child’s feelings.

Reinforce positive behaviors

Encourage thinking about how the child’s actions affect those around them.

Iterations and Further Steps

Adjustments made
Based off of our user testing results, we iterated our prototype and made the following changes:
1. Added visual elements such as instructions with icons on the prompt cards.
2. Personified E.D.D. and adjusted the elasticity of the bands to make them easier to pull.
3. Put the cards in plastic holders, which allows users to swap out content and attached them to
the string to create a pathway of step by step prompts for users to follow along. This
interaction breaks up the information and may

Figure 15: Personified Changes to the E.D.D. prototype are visualized.

Future Iterations

1. Explore the possibility of integrating technology and designing of accessibility.
2. Turn the interaction into a game — make positive emotions the end goal, and provide rewards when the child reaches that goal.
3. Create more negative emotion strings to help the children deal with harder feelings.
4. Test product with children & parents from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

Measurements Of Success
We believe parents and children will successfully use E.D.D. to facilitate conversations about how to name and deal with emotions. We will know this to be true when the child’s frequency of being sent to the counseling center to deal with emotional outbursts decreases by 50%.

Acknowledgements

To the many participants and educators who donated their precious time to collaborate on our User Centered Design project, we wanted to say “THANK YOU!” The perspectives that were provided to us by Subject Matter Experts (SME) were crucial in our decision-making process. Therefore we are grateful to have received positive reception about E.D.D. amongst SME; as one teacher stated:

“I (would) love E.D.D. as a tool to help parents focus on healthily helping their kid process emotions at home.”