Emotion Cloud
ENHANCING STUDENTS' EMOTIONAL LITERACY
Brief
With an aim of balancing connection and solitude at a learner-centered high school, we designed a check-in platform that promotes student well-being, encourages the community to label and recognize emotions, and supports awareness of presences in the school.
Format
12 weeks, 2024
Team members:
Katherine Niu
Yilin Li
Canwen Wang
Skills
UI/UX
Learning design
User research
Figma
Students as experts
Through a co-design process, my team and I worked directly with students, teachers, and staff at City of Bridges to deeply understand the needs of the community and gather insights to guide our design decisions.
City of Bridges High School
City of Bridges is an independent, learner-centered, and community-focused high school in Pittsburgh, PA. It prioritizes fostering a personalized learning environment, providing hands-on experiences, and encouraging active engagement with the community.
THE PROBLEM
The school's transition to a larger building introduces the challenge of maintaining the same sense of closeness while balancing needs for solitude and alone time.
REFRAMING
The challenge extends beyond the physical environment and into the ways emotional awareness is facilitated. Frequent in-person interaction can feel overwhelming for students who are still developing emotional literacy.
PREVIEW
Turning attendance into a meaningful act of care
Encouraging emotional awareness daily, students can:​
Share their emotions in ways comfortable to them
See emotional trends across the community
Respond to peers' emotions by sending messages of support
Stepping inside the school
Using contextual inquiry methods, we immersed ourselves in the school environment to understand the atmosphere first-hand, observe interactions, and conduct interviews with community members.
AEIOU Models
Not enough alone time (or space)
Through the contextual inquiry and synthesis of the models, we learned:​​
Most spaces in the building are shared.
There are limited boundaries between private and primarily group-oriented spaces.
There is an overlap of intensity in various interaction zones.
Boundaries between teachers and students are sometimes blurred.
The problem isn't closeness—it's emotional awareness
Talking to 6 CoB students and the school principal revealed that the current space doesn't meet students' needs for alone time. However, the underlying concern is that overreliance on teachers for support inhibits peer-peer emotional awareness and students' self-awareness.
Right now, the closeness is already too much.
We have closeness almost all the time, like, you see the rooms are connected with one hallway.
The support is very teacher-student. Like if we need help or something we just text our teachers, they’re always there.
We need more individual space if possible.
Quotes from CoB students
MOVING FORWARD
How might we facilitate students' awareness of peers' emotional states and needs?
Co-designing with students
Through storyboard speed dating to test 10 ideas with students, we learned that we need to empower students with more agency to check themselves in for attendance and facilitate peer-to-peer support, without compromising their personal boundaries.
Keeping flexibility and agency in mind
We conducted prototype testing with 4 students and 1 teacher to learn how they respond to sharing their emotions on their own terms and how well the platform supports emotional awareness.
WHAT WORKED
Positive reception to emotion cloud
Smooth and intuitive flow from attendance to emotion sharing
Anonymous sharing options
TO IMPROVE
Options for direct communication with peers or faculty
More flexibility in options for sharing emotions to cloud
Tips for showing support
BEFORE
Students can view tips for sending supportive, emotionally sensitive messages to peers.
AFTER
For improved skill-building, specific phrases and suggestions were added to the tips to provide more context.
Emotion-sharing preferences
BEFORE
Students can choose whether they prefer to share their emotion to the community cloud anonymously.
AFTER
To increase flexibility, students can choose to share anonymously and with whom they share.
Creating opportunities for emotional expression
Our reframed direction became to create a digital platform that reimagines attendance-taking as an opportunity for emotional expression which, over time, empowers students to develop the skills of expressing their emotional needs and supporting those of others.
Logging emotions
Students can explore a repository of emotions to choose one that best captures how they're feeling, developing emotional literacy. Explaining the reason behind their emotion encourages deeper reflection and the ability to express emotions.
Supporting peers
Students can become more comfortable sharing their own and recognizing others' emotions by exploring the community emotions cloud. Another key skill for students to build is offering nonjudgmental, compassionate support to peers, encouraged by the built-in messaging platform.
Takeaways
Working with a non-traditional high school brought about several challenges. We had to navigate ambiguity by uncovering the true needs hiding behind the perceived need for more space. We also learned to tackle emotional literacy skill-building in a way that was comfortable to hesitant students by incorporating it in ways sensitive to various comfort levels.
