Teamwork is a big part of society, and teams are seen as essential to effective collaboration at work and in educational environments. Effective teamwork is dependent on a variety of factors, one of which is the interplay of emotions. Self-confidence is an emotion that can benefit the individual by making them feel secure and at ease, believing in themselves and their abilities.
Circumstances and factors such as team dynamics can cause a student to experience moments of insecurity. This project aims to understand the needs, difficulties, and overall experiences of Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) students with moments of insecurity during teamwork activities. Taking the theory of embodied emotion as inspiration, the goal of the project was to design an intervention that could boost their feeling of self-confidence through tactile sensations in those moments.

The project started off with a comprehensive literature review to understand the role of self-confidence in design teams, defining the subjective experiences and behavioural expressions that make up self-confidence. A clear gap in concreteness was discovered, highlighting the need for insights about the experiences of the target group.

Through a series of qualitative research activities with the target group, it was discovered that moments of insecurity occurred mainly during brainstorming sessions, when they felt unheard or undervalued. This caused them to switch to a negatively connotated, passive participation state in which they began to lose passion for the project, following others without expressing their own opinions, while feeling tense and uncomfortable. In contrast to self-confidence, which was described as feeling calm and in control, not being afraid to take up space, both with their input as well as their bodies.

Designing a playful tool that provides them with a way of self-soothing, offers a subtle way to embrace these moments of retreat, while simultaneously encouraging them to switch back to an active state whenever they feel ready.
Through an iterative process of ideation, tactile exploration and evaluation, the concept of a chair was developed. The final design aspires to normalise moments of calm, providing the user with sensory comfort through a playful interaction that evokes a feeling of safety and reassurance. In this way, an object that is always present as a physical support can now also function as a mental support in times of insecurity.

A final evaluation showed that the design successfully evoked sensory comfort through playful interactions, with associations with safety and relaxation. However, further refinement is needed to enhance its effectiveness in portraying encouragement for an active state and not only a passive one.

Overall, this thesis aims to provide valuable insights into the experiences, needs and values of IDE students concerning self-confidence and teamwork, and the potential of a design intervention to tackle a part of the discovered issues. Aspiring to contribute to the well-being of students in teamwork environments, and normalise moments of rest in a passive state. Using a playful, calming tool to ultimately enhance their brainstorming experiences, boosting individuals’ feelings of self-confidence in teamwork through embodied emotion.