At a Glance
Role: UX Researcher, Product Designer, Prototype Lead, User Testing Lead
Timeline: Ten week graduate studio at SCAD
Platform: Classroom robot, Budiband wearable, and parent mobile app
Outcome: 50 of 52 parents approved a school worn biometric device in testing, with consistent enthusiasm from the six educators and counselors
A robot that gives kids a way out
WonderBudi is an AI robot designed for elementary school classrooms. It gives children a safe, engaging space to calm down during emotional distress, while silently alerting teachers and parents when a child needs further professional support.
The system pairs a biometric wristband called the Budiband with a child facing robot and a parent facing mobile app. When a child’s vitals signal distress, the ecosystem activates: teachers are notified, the child is walked to WonderBudi, and a structured 20 minute session of play therapy activities begins. At the end of every session, a single emoticon check in determines whether the child returns to class or meets with a school counselor.
My Role
UX Researcher · Product Designer · Prototype Lead · User Testing Lead
Technologies
Biometric Sensing (O2, heart rate, skin temperature) · NLP Voice Interaction · OLED Touchscreen Interface · Mobile Parent Dashboard · Card Sorting and Tree Testing
Children who cannot speak up
Mental health challenges in children are widespread and frequently go unaddressed. Young children lack the maturity and vocabulary to identify what they are feeling, which makes it nearly impossible for them to ask for the help they need.
Schools are structurally underprepared to close this gap. There are not enough counselors to monitor every student, and most children will not surface distress on their own. By the time a problem becomes visible, it has often gone unaddressed for far too long.
Help children calm down in times of distress and direct them to mental healthcare services when they do not have the ability to express their need for it on their own?
1 in every 5 children aged 5 to 17 currently needs mental health support
Listening before designing
A broad research effort spanning secondary literature, two surveys, and 16 structured interviews across four participant groups produced 22 core insights that shaped every design decision that followed.
16 interviews across four participant groups yielded 22 actionable insights
Voices from the Field
Interviews kept surfacing the same two findings: children find traditional therapy boring and cannot articulate what they feel, while 50 out of 52 surveyed parents said yes to a wearable device.
Children with trauma describe boredom with traditional therapy and an inability to articulate what they feel
50 out of 52 parents said they would allow their child to wear a biometric device at school
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping organized 763 data points from all 16 interviews into themed clusters, and a 6 step affinitization process distilled them into the How Might We statements.
763 data points from all 16 interviews organized by theme and participant type
The Pivot
Mid research, the team discovered that schools did not need more therapy programs. The real problem was identifying which students needed those programs in the first place. This drove a strategic pivot that redefined the entire product direction.
From insight to system
With the pivot established, the team built personas, mapped emotional user journeys, ran a Crazy 8 ideation sprint, and selected the WonderBudi ecosystem as the direction most capable of serving children, parents, and counselors simultaneously.
Personas and User Journeys
Two personas grounded the concept work: Tommy, a 10 year old who recently lost his mother, and Peter, an involved father who cannot reach his son.
Tommy (child) and Peter (parent): two perspectives on the same unmet need, separated by a communication gap WonderBudi is built to bridge
Tommy’s emotional arc across a school year, with WonderBudi as the turning point where the downward spiral is interrupted
Ideation
A Crazy 8 sprint generated eight rapid concept sketches, two of which were developed into full concepts, and the chosen direction was scoped as an early intervention tool, not a replacement for ongoing therapy.
Concept 1 (WonderBudi) was selected over Concept 2 (virtual counseling) because Concept 2 raised access, stigma, and ethics concerns
Storyboard
A classroom storyboard placed WonderBudi in a realistic school scenario, showing how three children with three different emotional states are all served by the same system on the same day in Mrs. Zimmerman’s class.
A single emoticon check in routes each child correctly: back to class, counselor visit, or continued monitoring
Building the WonderBudi world
The final design is a connected three part ecosystem: the WonderBudi robot, the Budiband biometric wristband, and the Parent App. Each component serves a different user, but all three share a data layer that keeps counselors, teachers, and parents informed in real time.
The WonderBudi robot, Budiband wristbands in four colors, and the tap to start onboarding screen
The Ecosystem Flow
Parents complete a consent and onboarding process before their child’s first session, and once the Budiband detects a change in biometrics, the flow from alert to classroom return runs across nine structured steps.
From biometric alert to classroom return: the full in school flow across nine structured steps
The WonderBudi Session
Each session follows the same arc: the child picks an avatar and an activity, tracks the remaining time on a visible timer, then closes with a breathing moment and reflection before returning to class.
Structured play with a visible timer transitions into a guided breathing moment and reflection, keeping the session inside the 20 minute window
Voice Interaction Scripts
Three conversation scripts cover the most common emotional states children arrive with. Each follows the same structure: an opening check in, a play session, a guided reflection, and a closing affirmation that the child can return anytime.
The anger script opens with a guided breathing exercise before play, then converges on the same reflective structure as the sad and anxious scripts
Hardware and Components
The Budiband reads heart rhythm, O2 levels, and skin temperature, and it has no screen to prevent distractions: parents can see the data but the student cannot.
The Budiband is screenless by design and comes in four colors, with data visible to parents but not to the student
Parent App
Parents have 24/7 access to their child’s biometrics and WonderBudi session history through the companion app. The dashboard acts as a single control center: showing vitals, session transcripts, counselor notes, and activity permissions together in one view.
Session history with counselor notes (left) and long term biometric trends (right) give parents a complete and evolving picture of their child
The dashboard acts as a control center (left); settings give parents full authority over which activity types their child can access (right)
Why WonderBudi works the way it does
Four decisions defined the character of the product. Each one came directly from something a real user said or did during research or testing.
Early concepts included a display on the wristband to show the child their own biometric readings. Research with child psychologists showed that giving children real time access to their own stress data increases anxiety rather than reducing it. Removing the screen entirely kept the band invisible to the child while still giving parents and teachers full visibility through the app. The band works best when the child forgets it is there.
Play therapy literature and direct interviews with school counselors pointed to 15 to 20 minutes as the window where a child can decompress without missing enough class to fall behind. Shorter sessions did not give enough time for the reflection conversation. Longer sessions created anxiety about returning to class. The 20 minute structure was not arbitrary. It was the clinical consensus from the professionals interviewed during research.
A 3 option check in (happy, neutral, sad) was the first design. Counselor feedback in testing showed that a 3 point scale collapsed too many emotional states into the same category and routed children incorrectly. A 10 point scale with a color gradient from red to green gives the system enough resolution to distinguish a child who is slightly upset from one who needs immediate counselor intervention. The routing accuracy depends on the granularity of the input.
Placing WonderBudi in the classroom itself was the original plan. Teacher interviews revealed that a robot in the classroom would create distraction and stigma, with other students watching when a classmate was sent to use it. Moving it near the counselor’s office normalized the visit as a routine school activity rather than a visible disciplinary or emotional event, protecting the child’s dignity during a vulnerable moment.
Testing with real educators and children
Three rounds of user testing validated the Parent App’s information architecture through card sorting and tree testing with children and parents, and gathered direct feedback from six real educators and counselors across international and domestic schools.
Real children did the card sorting themselves, one on a phone and one on a laptop, during observed testing sessions
Test 1 and 2: Card Sorting
Closed and open card sorts showed how parents naturally group Parent App content, and the results pointed to a 5 category navigation structure.
Monitor Heart Rate and Monitor O2 Level grouped together with 100 percent agreement: users navigate by concrete keywords, not brand terms
Card sorting data pointed clearly to a 5 category navigation structure for the Parent App
Test 3: Tree Test
A final tree test checked whether participants could find the right destinations inside the revised 5 category structure.
Tree test results: 90% task success rate and 75% directness confirmed the 5 category navigation structure was intuitive and ready for production
90% of participants reached the correct destination, confirming the 5 category structure mapped closely to how parents think about monitoring their child.
75% of answers were reached without backtracking, a strong signal that the information architecture was intuitive without prior training or guidance.
The term WonderBudi as a navigation label confused participants and was categorized separately. Labels were revised to reflect specific actions rather than the product name.
Users scanned for concrete keywords rather than brand names. Labels across the app were revised to prioritize action oriented language throughout.
A system that speaks for those who cannot
WonderBudi demonstrates that a child who cannot yet put their distress into words does not have to stay invisible. The six educators and counselors who participated in testing responded with consistent enthusiasm. One 4th grade teacher described it as the first tool she had seen that could catch the kids who fall through the cracks before they disappear entirely. A school counselor at an international school noted that the emoticon routing system solved the identification problem that consumes the majority of a counselor’s day. By reading biometrics, offering play based calm, and routing real data to the adults who need it, WonderBudi creates a bridge between a child in need and the professional who can help.
A 90% tree test success rate and 50 out of 52 parents approving wearables for their children validated both the information architecture and the core premise: parents actively want visibility into their child’s school day wellbeing and will adopt a system that gives it to them.
Seven core values guided every design decision, from the script language Budi uses to the color options on the Budiband
Future Directions
The longer WonderBudi knows a child, the more precisely it can tailor activities and conversation scripts to what works for that specific child over time.
A dedicated counselor view to see cross class distress patterns, flag recurring students, and coordinate follow up sessions without reviewing individual parent app logs.
A lower cost tablet only version at $300 would make WonderBudi accessible to schools with tighter budgets and no space for a dedicated robot station.
A multi semester study tracking emotional regulation outcomes would provide clinical evidence to support adoption across broader school districts and funding bodies.