Understanding how technology can support social-emotional learning of children: a dyadic trauma-informed participatory design with proxies

Document Title

Understanding how technology can support social-emotional learning of children: a dyadic trauma-informed participatory design with proxies

Document Information

• Subject Area: Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), Trauma-Informed Design, Participatory Design
• Keywords: Trauma-Informed Design, Social-Emotional Learning, Participatory Design, Child Mental Health, Proxies, Emotion Regulation, Family Dynamics, Technological Innovation, Human-Computer Interaction

Research Background and Issues

• Problems and Challenges:

  1. Children with trauma backgrounds often face significant challenges in learning social-emotional skills (SEL). A lack of these skills can lead to educational barriers, increased health risk behaviors (e.g., substance abuse or alcoholism), and mental health issues (e.g., anxiety and depression).
  2. Most current interventions focus on schools or clinics, with limited exploration of how to support parents in guiding their children’s social-emotional learning within the home environment.
  3. Directly engaging children and parents with trauma histories in research or design activities risks triggering retraumatization, posing ethical concerns.

• Research Significance:

  1. Enhancing children’s self-regulation, empathy, and social skills through social-emotional learning can improve their mental health and quality of life.
  2. Supporting social-emotional learning in the home environment, particularly under parental guidance, addresses a critical gap in the role of families in children’s psychological development.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  1. The motivation lies in exploring how technology can better support parents in employing emotion coaching strategies in the home environment, aligned with trauma-informed principles.
  2. Previous research proposed the "Safety, Connection, and Reflection Framework" to provide structured guidance for achieving emotion coaching goals. This study focuses on further developing how these strategies can be implemented in family contexts through technological support.
  3. There is a lack of specific methods in the design field to guide participatory design in trauma-sensitive environments, necessitating further research.

Solutions

• Research Methods and Innovations:

  1. Introduced the "Participatory Design with Proxies" (PDwP) method, where therapists and social workers with professional expertise act as proxies, representing parents and children in families.
  2. Utilized participatory design workshops with role-playing tools to explore how proxies can achieve social-emotional learning goals in the home environment.
  3. Developed design solutions as trauma-informed interactive formats, avoiding direct engagement with real children and parents with trauma backgrounds, thus mitigating ethical risks.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  1. Framework Adaptation: Adopted the "Safety, Connection, and Reflection Framework" to guide scenario enactment and tool design in workshops.
  2. Design Workshops: Designed four activity stages, including warm-up, scenario development, role-playing, and reflection, to guide proxies in collaboratively exploring technological possibilities and strategy applications.
  3. Tool Generation: Used ambiguous paper props (e.g., tablets, toys) and scenario cards as meaningful and flexible generative materials to encourage proxies’ imagination and innovation.
  4. Collected data through open-ended questions and reflection sessions, including recordings, videos, and artifact analysis.

• Technological Innovations:

  1. Integrated core principles of trauma-informed care (e.g., safety, trust, empathy) into the design process.
  2. Proposed several key design attributes for SEL-related technologies, such as technology-mediated emotional expression, attention redirection, and resource support.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes:

  1. Proposed 12 technological concepts, including five mobile applications, three tablet applications, and four interactive smart toy designs aimed at helping parents support children’s social-emotional learning in the home environment.
  2. Identified three parental roles in implementing emotion coaching strategies: peer, supporter, and carer, and explored how technology can support the dynamic transition between these roles.
  3. Established four design attributes to be embedded in SEL family technologies, including conversational intervention, attention redirection, visualization of emotional expression, and resource utilization.
  4. Proposed seven specific research guidelines for proxy-based participatory design, such as the need for intimate knowledge involvement, trauma-informed scenario co-creation, and fostering a safe environment.

• Experiment and Evaluation Results:

  1. Collected feedback from proxies on strategies for handling high-emotion scenarios through role-playing workshops.
  2. Validated critical ethical considerations in the design process, such as how to explore real-life cases without directly harming sensitive groups.
  3. Reflected on trauma-informed participatory approaches during the design process, demonstrating the feasibility of this method in sensitive environment research.

• Comparison with Existing Solutions and Advantages:

  1. Unlike traditional school and clinic interventions, this study emphasizes technological support for dynamic social interactions in the home environment.
  2. The trauma-informed design approach deeply considers participants’ sense of safety and psychological state.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. This study only explored single-parent/single-child family scenarios; future research could expand to include siblings or complex family structures.
  2. Due to the introduction of proxies, the direct feasibility of design solutions requires further validation, such as follow-up experiments with real parents and children.
  3. Future research is encouraged to deepen the conceptualization of technology and explore its potential to support SEL strategies in more dynamic family scenarios.