EmpatiKids: Helping Kids and Caregivers Navigate Emotions Together
Timeline: April 2024
Context: As part of the Google UX Design Certificate, this project was inspired by the importance of emotional intelligence in early childhood. The focus was on creating tools to support emotional education.
Challenge: Develop a cross-platform service to help children understand emotions and practice empathy.
Solution: EmpatiKids is an app and responsive website that provides resources for caregivers of children aged 2 to 8, empowering them to teach emotional awareness in an engaging and accessible way.
🚩
The problem:
Emotional education for children is often overlooked in our society. Most children learn to navigate emotions by observing their caregivers, who may themselves lack the tools or knowledge to effectively manage their own emotional states. This gap is compounded by misinformation and a scarcity of resources designed to support emotional development in early childhood.
🎯
Objective:
Design a tool that empowers caregivers to take an active and informed role in nurturing children's emotional education, fostering emotional intelligence from an early age.
🎭
My role:
Inspired by watching my nieces and nephews grow and seeing my sister’s challenges as a caregiver, I took charge of research, ideation, prototyping, usability testing and final designs to create a practical tool for emotional education.
The users
In-depth Interviews.
Persona.
User journey.
In-depth Interviews
5 heterosexual mothers of children aged 4 to 10 (emotionally formative years) living in Costa Rica, Canada, and Spain.
(While all research participants were heterosexual mothers, this introduces a bias by excluding other types of caregivers such as fathers, grandparents, and others.)👀
"Just like us, children learn about emotions by observing the examples set by their parents."
When reflecting on their own emotional education, the mothers recognized that much of what they learned came from watching how their parents managed their own emotions.
📖
"We are emotionally illiterate."
Most of the time, mothers struggle to name what they’re feeling, let alone understand what their kids are going through.
🤷♀️
"Even if I know what I'm feeling, I have no idea what to do with it."
There’s even less understanding of emotional regulation, and finding the right tools often requires significant time and research.
🧘
"When my child is experiencing a big emotional moment, being fully present makes all the difference."
At a young age, children are still learning to identify their emotions. During intense moments, what they need most is a strong connection with their caregiver.
Persona
Laura: Divorced Mother Seeking Emotional Growth
Laura, a 41-year-old marketing professional, is a single mother to her 10-year-old daughter. Since her divorce three years ago, Laura has struggled to manage her emotions and often loses patience with her daughter. This has led to moments of stress where she treats her daughter poorly, and her daughter has begun mirroring these emotional patterns.
😡 Main Frustration: Laura lacks the tools to regulate her own emotions during stressful moments, impacting her relationship with her daughter and their emotional well-being.
Laura and her daughter's journey
Let’s Design
Paper Wireframes.
Low Fidelity App Prototype.
Unmoderated Usability Study & Design Iterations.
Paper Wireframes
Low fidelity app prototype
Encyclopedia of Emotions:
This is the app's main feature, where all the information about emotions is centralized. Caregivers can learn about the full range of emotions and understand what each one entails in terms of physical and mental symptoms.
Emotion Regulation Activities:
The encyclopedia provides knowledge, but this feature focuses on action. It offers quick activities like breathwork, dancing, painting, and meditations for caregivers to practice with their children. These short exercises are easy to learn and apply without relying on the app.
Unmoderated Usability Study & Design Iterations
The same 5 women who participated in the initial in-depth interviews were involved in this phase.
😨
"The thing is, I don’t always know what my son or I are feeling… It makes me anxious to choose just one emotion from that long list."
"I Don't Know What I Feel" Button:
Identifying emotions can be challenging, so this feature was added to guide users through a series of questions that helps them pinpoint what exactly is they’re feeling.
📹
"Kids under 6 wouldn’t be able to use this app on their own—it would always have to be through me [the mom]. But maybe with drawings or stories, they could get more out of it too..."
Stories for Kids:
We all, especially children, learn best through stories. A short video was added to each emotion's screen to help kids better understand the emotion and how it feels to experience it.
Final Outcome
Final App Designs.
Final App Designs
A screen for every emotion
The information on each would be need to be fact-checked and include a short educational story video for kids about that specific emotion.
Different type of activities
Since the moments when the app would be used varied greatly, it was important to include both video and audio-only exercises, allowing greater flexibility for the moms.
Help with Defining the Emotion
Users are guided through a series of targeted questions designed to help them identify their current emotion. This feature simplifies the often complex process of pinpointing feelings, providing clarity and understanding before moving on to regulation strategies.
For the Future
Impact.
Lessons & Improvements.
Impact
As this was an academic project, it was not publicly released, so no usage data is available.
"I wish my mom had a tool like this to guide her in emotional education—for both her sake and mine."
—Participant C
"I love the app; I find it super useful. It’s so handy to search for emotions this way… and to have tools for each one."
—Participant A
Lessons & Improvements
🥅
Defining Platform Goals:
Clearly distinguishing objectives for the app and responsive website from the start ensures both platforms meet unique user needs effectively.
🧒
Involving Children:
Including children in research, even if they’re not direct users, could add valuable insights to make the tool more engaging.
📝
Caregiver-Child Testing:
Observing caregivers and children use the app together during activities would provide critical feedback to improve usability and design.