Rena
Wei
Emotif App Design
In the current climate of high external pressure and life complexity, people are overwhelmed by emotional volatility, which creates significant roadblocks to personal and professional success. While many are aware of and attempt various coping strategies, they often fail to maintain consistent, effective self-care practices. Therefore, this project aims to examine and address this issue by creating an intuitive, supportive, and personalized digital tool specifically for on-the-go event-based emotion recognition and regulation.
Project type: Learning Design + End-to-end app
Role: Instructional / UIUX Designer
Industry: Mental Health, Education
Background
How can we help young generations thrive under the
Emotional Recession
Emotion Recession is a sustained global decline in emotional intelligence (EQ) and well-being since 2019 (Freedman et al., 2024). This emotional crisis is particularly acute among young adults. Gen Z, for instance, has experienced a 12% drop in the ability to navigate emotions and faces high rates of loneliness, self-criticism, and burnout, despite high levels of achievement. They often resort to short-term coping mechanisms rather than developing sustainable, long-term strategies for emotional wellness. This underscores the urgent need for accessible and effective interventions designed to enhance emotion regulation (ER), the process where individuals "influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they are experienced and expressed" (Gross, 2015, p. 6).
Delivery
Personas
The target audience for this tool consists of students and young professionals who are navigating life’s complexities and are actively seeking tools for self-improvement and emotional clarity. Two personas, “Overwhelmed Oli” and “Insecure Ian,” were developed to represent these audience segments.
Self-Guided Journaling Framework
The core of the tool is to provide a self-guided journaling activity, designed to make the process of emotion regulation intuitive, structured, and effective. To streamline the flow of tasks, I developed a multidisciplinary framework that integrates the clinical rigor of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) with the cyclical learning process of Experiential Learning Theory (ELT) to guide the core activity.
Logic Model for Roadmapping
Based on the core journaling activity framework, I further established the comprehensive logic model, which serves as a roadmap, articulating the underlying theory of how the proposed learning program is designed to function. It visually represents the causal relationships between program investments, activities, and intended results, providing a structured framework for planning, implementation, and evaluation.
User journey, Design, and Prototypes
I created and iterated on the App LX/UIUX design to ensure it captures the key activities, optimal learning path, and enhanced user experience. The final prototype showcases the innovative, intuitive ways of event-based journaling and demonstrates the responsible usage of AI to scaffold users' self-reflection in a moderate, controlled manner.
