Week 3 - Defining the Need

This week, our team dealt with determining the idea which will be the platform for the rest of our project. Our talk was fascinating and touched many subjects, but in the end we agreed to focus on the subject of emotional regulation.

Stop! A little intro:

Our talk started with the thought that memories are built on a set of emotions, and for a person to collect a positive memory, they must experience a positive emotion.

One of the prime challenges for many people is the ability to regulate their emotions from negative experiences and deal with them in a better way, in order to improve their well-being.

At first we had quite a few disagreements because each one of us had a somewhat different perspective on the matter, but eventually we noticed that what we all had in common was focusing on finding solution in times of crisis, hardship, sadness and anger.

Emotional regulation is a fascinating area which can be relevant to anyone(!) but who do we turn to? Who is our audience?

Puberty is characterized with adolescencts developing control over their behavior and over their thoughts and emotions. During puberty, cognitive, emotional and social changes occur with adolescencts, which can at times lead to the puberty crisis which is characterized with many conflicting emotions and inner stress. Adolescencts are sensitive to these kinds of changes, which could lead to many negative behavioral changes, but with the right guidance they could be lead to a right way of living with a good control over their emotions and behavior.

We chose to focus on this age because we believe that the need we’re exploring is highly relevant at this phase of a person’s life. Puberty is common youth at the ages of 12-18.

Throughout the week, we held interviews with different people and found out that there is a need for help with emotional regulation at different ages, but for the sake of focus on puberty we modeled a persona which will represent our ideal consumer and who we believe has the need for help when it comes to regulating emotions.

Stay tuned to learn of our progress! ;)

Our persona

Yoni, 17 years old, senior high-school student.

Joins the IDF’s “Golani” brigade next November.

The youngest of three brothers, his father is a tough veteran of the General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (“Sayeret Matkal”), a stereotypical macho. When he’s having a bad day - a fight with his girlfriend, failed a test, etc, he feels like he has nobody to turn to. His brothers pick on him, his father tells him to man up, and he feels too awkward to talk to his school friends, afraid that it would ruin his “manly” reputation at school.

He keeps all his emotions to himself, and it starts to have negative effects on him: he can’t bring himself to focus at school which leads to more bad grades,

his physical fitness which he has worked so hard to maintain to prepare for his military service is starting to dwindle, he’s less enthusiastic to hang out with his friends.

If he only had a way to deal with he's problems in his own personal way

and regulate his emotions...

Emotional self-regulation

Emotional self-regulation or emotion regulation is the ability to react to the ongoing demands of the daily experiences with a range of emotions in a reasonable way compared to the given situation. Emotional Self-Regulation is the control mechanism of the emotional system of the human mind and body, which allows the person to have hard to handle emotions while restraining themselves and not acting as the first instinct tells them - but thinking beforehand by “observing” as a third party, or “a look from above” sort of way, and by that way to act rationally from the day to day experiences to the most drastic rare ones which are hard to handle.

By Emotional Self Regulation, the people can set goals for themselves and function in a correct and productive way.