GAMIFYING FAMILY COMMUNICATION TO PROMOTE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Nebula supports families to enhance their children’s emotional development through the promotion of everyday communication promoting mutual skills growth for the family members.
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This was a solo project involving generative and evaluative research studies, UX/UI design, and psychology.
Type of work: Design research, service design and UX.
Mentor: prof. Martin Pärn
Project length: 6 months.
THE PROBLEM
If children mimic and learn to manage their own emotions from their social interactions, what kind of skills are getting those with emotionally illiterate parents?
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Emotional Intelligence as part of children’s development determines their relationship with their own and others’ emotions. The family constitutes the first facilitator in this learning process. However, a lack of education in this regard has generated a gap for many parents to know how to manage their own emotions or guide their children toward these competencies.
Therefore, this project aimed to find how a design-based approach and solution can support parent-child communication for developing Emotional Intelligence and integrating this practice into the family routine.
LACK OF EMOTIONAL EDUCATION
Emotions misbeliefs
ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT FOCUS
Overuse of screens
PARENT'S EMOTIONS ARE NOT A PRIORITY
Over-attention to children
THE PROCESS
The complexity of this subject implicates getting closer to understand not only the psychological aspects, but also the context of families nowadays, including the influence of technology. Therefore, the research was conducted by the following methodologies:
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Literature research and psychology documentation review.
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Interviews with experts: psychologies, pediatricians, teachers and parents.
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An online questionnaire with 16 people
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System mapping, user journey, and service blueprint.
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A cultural probe for 5 families to understand emotional communication in their daily life
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Workshops with family for testing prototype.
The design research started with an experimentation session to get familiar with how children relate to emotions and comprehend how to manage the abstractness of the topic.
After the interviews with parents and experts, the need of understanding how emotional communication works in the family was evident. A probe was designed and tested previously to assure the activity was suitable for 6 to 8 years old children
A Cultural Probe was run with 5 families aiming to provoke conversations about emotions. The first insight from the activity is how lack of time affects family routine. Therefore, this factor increases the use of screens and reduces the opportunity for emotional education.
INSIGHTS
The research showed that the flow of emotional communication can be intricated by several factors, however, it also indicated that parents need to be supported to learn and integrate emotional skills into their behaviors and routines.
FROM OBSTACLES TO OPPORTUNITIES
THE DESIGN
The research's results suggest that by providing a dedicated space for emotional communication with a playful approach and progressive guidance for parents, families have the opportunity to practice emotional abilities that later will integrate into their daily lives.
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That is how Nebula is proposed as a digital platform for gamifying families' emotional communication with these three main principles.
The platform encourages everyday parent-child emotional communication with games that provoke physical interactions.
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Collaborative game
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Spaceship as the narrative game
The game proposes prompts to start the conversation
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Score system
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Track achievements
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Option to preset game with specific topics or emotions
Customized support for parents about their children’s emotional development after analyzing games’ answers.
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Machine learning after identifying keys words and indicators in answers,
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Nebula experience and journey map
A low fidelity prototype was used to test the general idea of the game and later a higher fidelity prototype was applied for measuring the interaction.
IMPACT & COMMENTS
​The general impression of the concept was positive. First, regarding solutions for promoting Emotional Intelligence in childhood, experts saw it as an opportunity to extend and support psychologists’ reach by taking care of mental health, which should be aprio rity nowadays. Second, they found it interesting that the proposal uses gamification for releasing and normalizing emotions, hence it suggests new ways to manage them by
providing a safe space for that.
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"The thesis exceeded my expectations and I believe that the author could have a bright future as a (service) designer in the mental health field".
Dr. Kadri Haljas (PhD in Psychology)
CEO of Triumf Health
“Although there is not a magic formula to manage emotions, with Nebula there is a safe space to release them”
Luis Rodriguez, psychologist
Nebula
GAMIFYING FAMILY COMMUNICATION TO PROMOTE EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE.