EmoRainbow: How Can Phygital Artefacts Support Emotional Regulation in Disaster Preparedness?

This paper presents two design-oriented educational units within a broader programme aimed at supporting emotional awareness, regulation, and preparedness in hydrogeological disaster scenarios in children and adolescents. The units introduce purposefully designed phygital artefacts—physical objects augmented with digital technologies—as tangible supports to externalise emotional processes and prompt reflection on coping in risk-related contexts. Through guided interaction and reflection, participants explore how emotions can be sensed, represented, and transformed through interaction, and articulate design ideas for their own emotionally expressive phygital artefacts grounded in disaster preparedness situations. The units were implemented as a pilot with university students to assess the clarity, feasibility, and coherence of the artefacts and activities prior to deployment in school contexts. The paper describes the phygital artefacts’ structure and interaction logic, and how they support reflection on emotion regulation and the articulation of design concepts for disaster preparedness.