Emotional first aid for broken hearts

Abstract

What do we do when we make a mistake, get rejected at a job interview or by a romantic prospect? Loneliness, loss, and failure are common everyday experiences that every one of us goes through. However, many brush aside such ’emotional injuries’, or even make them worse, ’picking on their wounds’ by engaging in unhelpful coping strategies (Winch, 2013).

Because of our fundamental need to establish meaningful relationships, emotional injuries can be especially painful in our romantic lives. The rapid and often ’impersonal’ nature of modern online dating can enable frequent negative experiences; small rejections and heartbreaks that can negatively impact people’s self-esteem and well-being (Andrighetto et al., 2019; Her & Timmermans, 2021).

Practicing emotional first aid can help to cope with the ’invisible’ pain of such small injuries and help to efficiently recover from them, building resilience that allows people to withstand life’s hardships (Winch, 2013). Designers can help people deal with these injuries by facilitating positive emotional experiences in human-product interactions. Positive design interventions focusing on resilience and self-compassion can contribute to emotion regulation, leading to improved personal and societal well-being (Gilbert & Choden, 2014; Petermans & Cain, 2019; Yoon et al., 2021).

Using a Research through Design approach, the project explored how designers can translate psychological techniques into tangible solutions and introduce positive psychology interventions for emotional injuries in the context of dating.

Using a framework based on 7 everyday injuries outlined by Winch (2013), and the 13 fundamental needs theory of Desmet and Fokkinga (2020) a ’map of injuries’ and corresponding ’injury cards’ were developed based on a diary study with currently dating singles. The map and the cards discuss the triggers and the nature of the possible injuries in addition to the needs to be fulfilled by the design intervention. The map and the cards were used to generate design concepts, which were introduced to experts in social sciences and relationship studies during three separate sessions. Using sketches and short scenarios as prototypes for discussion, design objectives for providing emotional first aid were collected. These objectives are demonstrated in a final concept called ’Huggle’.

’Huggle’ is a physical tool and service directly offered by, and integrated into the online dating platform. The product is a collection of self-compassion prompts in the form of colourful acrylic pills wrapped in mycelium coating. The prompts allow people to practice self-compassion after a negative event, accepting and observing their feelings instead of turning to self-criticism and withdrawal.

Using the concept as a research tool during two evaluation studies with users has shown that tangible interventions for emotional first aid need to follow the main principles of flexibility, unobtrusiveness (intimacy), and simplicity. Creating product meaning through personalization and sparking interest and curiosity might help to entice repeated use, aiding reflection and learning.

The findings of this project can give foundation to future work in the area of designing psychological interventions in the domains of emotional first aid, coping, and emotion regulation.