Sensi

INCREASING EMOTIONAL
INTELLIGENCE AMONG KIDS

Designing for social goods

PREVIEW PROTOTYPE

CHALLENGE

Despite the common misconception that emotional intelligence is only relevant in adults, it is equally important in children. People's long-term health and success in interpersonal relationships—both social and professional—depend on us nurturing their emotional learning from a young age.

SOLUTION

Children frequently experience strong emotions filled with a gust of feelings, such as excitement and frustration. As kids become older, learning how to identify and healthily express their emotions can be crucial to their shape and development.

My Role

UX RESEARCH AND DESIGN

RESPONSIBILITIES

USER RESEARCH, WIREFRAMING, USABILITY STUDY, LOW- / HIGH- FIDELITY PROTOTYPE

PROJECT DURATION

2 WEEKS

01 RESEARCH

To understand how to help children learn about emotions, I reached for secondary data from scholarly articles that published research on educational tools and methods.

Research suggests that there are five skills necessary to teach children to increase their emotional intelligence (Brackett and Rivers (2014)).

RULER METHODOLOGY

emotional intelligence

Recognize emotions in oneself and others

Understand the causes and consequences of emotions

Label emotions accurately

Express emotions appropriately for the time, place, and culture

Regulate emotions

IMPLEMENTATION

Children that have higher emotional intelligence are more compassionate, more able to pay attention, more involved in their studies, and have more pleasant connections (Raver, Garner, & Smith-Donald 2007; Eggum et al. 2011).

1 Mood meter that tracks emotions periodically,

2 Stories that introduce reader to situations during which certain feelings occurred.

3 Empathizing how feelings affect our body and our surrounding.

References
Brackett, M.A., & S.E. Rivers. 2014. “Transforming Students’ Lives With Social and Emotional Learning.” In International Handbook of Emotions in Education, eds. R. Pekrun & L. Linnenbrink-Garcia, 368–88. New York: Taylor & Francis.

02 EARLY CONCEPTS

Learning about children behaviour

user persona

TEACHING TOOLS

EMOTIONAL EDUCATION TOOLS

A structured method of social and emotional learning (SEL) called RULER was created by the Yale Center a Emotional Intelligence. In order to improve how leaders lead, instructors educate, kids learn, and families assist students, RULER intends to integrate the concepts of emotional intelligence into the entire system of PreK to 12 schools.

Taking inspiration from the RULER method, I identified three aspects that potentially could be utilized in the educational mobile app. Those are stories that provide app users a glimpse into circumstances where particular emotions transpired, interactive ways of showing examples of body reactions to certain feelings, and techniques that help to control them.

BODY

teach how emotions affect our bodies

STORIES

share others stories; what triggered certain behavior how they found balance

TECHNIQUE

teach how to control emotions to not harm ourselves and others

03 WIREFRAMES

Pictures and descriptions of the emotions that the user can choose from and be a theme of the day.

Three main actions that the user can take:
1. learn how the body reacts when we feel a certain way
2. learn how to control emotion
3. watch the story about the tiger and the day he felt a certain way.