Not a Playroom, but a Passage: Exploring the Design Space of a Technology-mediated Calm-down Corner

Abstract

Preschool educators play an important role in supporting children's emotion regulation capacities in ways that promote their socioemotional and behavioral health. However, tracking children's emotional changes and giving timely intervention to every child in the class simultaneously is challenging for preschool educators. In this paper, we use the "calm-down corner," which is widely used in classrooms with spaces where children can regain emotional control, as a probe to explore the design space of technology-supported preschool educators dealing with children's emotional problems through one semi-structured interview with ten preschool educators and one co-design session with another 12 preschool educators. We summarized current challenges and the design considerations from preschool educators' perspective, which could offer valuable insights for technology-enabled systems to facilitate the emotion regulation process for educators in the future.