Bringing Emotions into the Picture: the CambiaColore Technology for Socio-emotional Learning in Children

Recognizing our and other people's emotions and being able to express them are key abilities that need to be nurtured and cherished. Technologies can provide teachers and educators with tools that help them engage children in didactic activities, which can foster the development of their emotional abilities. These technologies can also help children find outlets for their emotions, for instance through drawing or expressing emotions with their bodies. This work presents CambiaColore, a novel technology for emotional expression in children. The technology is grounded in the link between drawing and emotion, which is particularly powerful in children and aims to provide teachers with a novel engaging tool for educational, socio-emotional learning activities. Moreover, the technology aims to help children better grasp the interplay between individual and group emotions. The system was co-designed with teachers and educators, who provided incredibly valuable insight regarding its usability and target users. Here, we describe the theoretical premises of our system and its set-up and game-play and present future work directions.