Abstract

This paper presents how the research through design approach contributed to drive the exploration on design for emotional well-being on cognitively impaired children, who have visual and memory disabilities. A user understanding was gained through iterative process between research and practice. The tactile investigation and the responsible coupling between the physical and the computational materials are a key strategy to evoke positive emotions. The motivation is to define appropriate emotional effects through the combination of the physical and computational materials and gather relevant user information, using video to reflect on the initial designs, to envision how these emotional effects can be achieved. Subsequently, it will support to design qualities in the interaction that evoke intended emotions among children and pedagogues. The outcomes are the tangible designs, the emotions’ evaluation and a compilation of written and visual annotations that describe the knowledge gathered from the design thinking of the research through design methodology applied along the project activity. Additionally, the findings obtained from the knowledge, grounded by the iterative process, can be viewed as an attempt to encourage designers and researchers to consider the emotional well-being topic that has gaining a steady interest in the design community.

Keywords

Emotional Well-being; Research Through Design; Cognitively Impaired Children; Physical Material; Computational Material

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Jun 16th, 12:00 AM

Design for Emotional Well-being: A tactile and a material investigation

This paper presents how the research through design approach contributed to drive the exploration on design for emotional well-being on cognitively impaired children, who have visual and memory disabilities. A user understanding was gained through iterative process between research and practice. The tactile investigation and the responsible coupling between the physical and the computational materials are a key strategy to evoke positive emotions. The motivation is to define appropriate emotional effects through the combination of the physical and computational materials and gather relevant user information, using video to reflect on the initial designs, to envision how these emotional effects can be achieved. Subsequently, it will support to design qualities in the interaction that evoke intended emotions among children and pedagogues. The outcomes are the tangible designs, the emotions’ evaluation and a compilation of written and visual annotations that describe the knowledge gathered from the design thinking of the research through design methodology applied along the project activity. Additionally, the findings obtained from the knowledge, grounded by the iterative process, can be viewed as an attempt to encourage designers and researchers to consider the emotional well-being topic that has gaining a steady interest in the design community.

 

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