{"id":275,"date":"2025-05-29T10:50:03","date_gmt":"2025-05-29T14:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/?p=275"},"modified":"2025-09-19T11:40:25","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T15:40:25","slug":"designing-empathy-driven-tools-to-combat-cyberbullying-in-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/2025\/designing-empathy-driven-tools-to-combat-cyberbullying-in-children\/","title":{"rendered":"Designing Empathy-Driven Tools to Combat Cyberbullying in Children"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Designing Empathy-Driven Tools to Combat Cyberbullying in Children\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                                    \n\n<p>Hooman Gheshlaghi&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"project-summary\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Project Summary<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Cyberbullying among children aged 8 to 12 is an escalating challenge, often overlooked in both policy and design. Hooman Gheshlaghi\u2019s thesis tackles this issue by developing a <strong>cyberbullying assessment toolkit<\/strong> that empowers children to express their experiences safely while equipping parents with tools to recognize and respond effectively.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This study adopts a <strong>narrative and empathy-driven design approach<\/strong>, creating a high-fidelity prototype that integrates <strong>customizable avatars, journaling tools, emotion figurines, and analysis packages<\/strong>. The toolkit facilitates emotional expression and reflection for children while providing parents with structured data to understand the incident\u2019s context and severity. Through <strong>semi-structured interviews with parents<\/strong>, the research surfaced five thematic benefits: improved communication, emotional support, intuitive usability, rich feedback, and deeper understanding of children\u2019s reluctance to report incidents.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By blending <strong>human-centered, narrative, and trauma-informed design principles<\/strong>, this project contributes a novel, developmentally appropriate intervention that fosters <strong>empathy, autonomy, and open dialogue<\/strong> between children and caregivers in the digital age.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Keywords<\/strong>: Cyberbullying, Empathy Design, Parent-Child Communication, Narrative Design, Children\u2019s Digital Safety, Personal Informatics, UX for Youth&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n                \n        <div class=\"cu-column cu-component not-contained mx-auto grid max-w-5xl md:grid-cols-3 gap-6 md:gap-10\">\n            \n\n\n        <\/div>\n\n        \n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Project Summary Cyberbullying among children aged 8 to 12 is an escalating challenge, often overlooked in both policy and design. Hooman Gheshlaghi\u2019s thesis tackles this issue by developing a cyberbullying assessment toolkit that empowers children to express their experiences safely while equipping parents with tools to recognize and respond effectively.&nbsp; This study adopts a narrative [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":394,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mdes"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275\/revisions\/285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/positivetechlab\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}