Enhancing Education Through Emotional Engagement: A Study on Junior Designers

Emotional Design Principles are increasingly incorporated into the curriculum for junior design students, recognised as essential for fostering innovation and enhancing user-centred solutions. This study identifies a pathway to address the misalignment between the plurality of art and junior designers in the design course. The study employs a mixed-methods approach, utilising action research, surveys, and focus groups to evaluate the impact of emotional design on students’ creativity, empathy, and decision-making. Throughout three terms, workshops will present concepts associated with emotional design via hands-on projects that promote experiential learning and collaboration among participants. The assessment of alterations in the understanding and implementation of emotional design principles will be conducted statistically using a pre-and post-workshop questionnaire. Focus group talks will be used to gather qualitative data on students’ experiences and perspectives. Preliminary findings indicate that incorporating emotional design into the students’ learning environment may enhance creativity and sympathetic comprehension. Participants are anticipated to possess a better comprehension of the impact of their emotional connections on their design work and user-centred solutions. This research aims to construct a theoretical formal model of emotional design principles in creative curricula, taking into account the significant influence of cultural settings on students’ perceptions of emotional design. These findings will assist educators in determining which strategies might improve design education via the emotional engagement of younger designers, to better equip them to navigate the complexities of the developing world. To achieve this, it is essential to train not just technically adept designers but also those with cultural sensitivity and emotional intelligence, emphasising the significance of emotion in innovation and user experience.