IP Notice: The concepts, frameworks, and methodologies described in this document, including the Adaptive Learning Framework for Self-Directed Learning and Emotional Resilience, are the original work of LumosMind Lab. All rights are reserved. This framework is provided for educational, research, and collaborative purposes only. Unauthorized use, reproduction, or application of these concepts without explicit permission is prohibited. Institutions or individuals wishing to build upon, adapt, or integrate aspects of this framework are welcome to do so only with appropriate acknowledgment of the founder’s name and lab’s name and with formal consent. Certain proprietary details of this framework are not disclosed in this case study for confidentiality and intellectual property protection purposes. For inquiries or potential collaborations, please contact the lab's founder here.
System Design | User Experience | Behavioral Data Architecture | Cognitive Psychology
Core Human Needs
LumosMind Lab was created as a research-driven lab to build an adaptive learning system enhancing emotional resilience in early childhood. Traditional education methods often prioritize cognitive development over emotional intelligence because it's easier to measure and yields tangible results. While children may be taught to recognize emotions, they are rarely guided to process or embrace complex feelings.
During play, children often encounter frustration, which can trigger their fight-or-flight response, momentarily impairing their cognitive control. However, instead of being encouraged to process these emotions, children are often offered “quick-fix” coping mechanisms that promote avoidance rather than resilience.
Truth to be told, the real challenge is not only within children; it is often passed down by generations who model avoidance or superficial coping strategies. This system is designed to support both children and caregivers in breaking these patterns by fostering emotional resilience in a sustainable, data-informed, and research-backed way.
Systemic Solution
Frustration is a critical emotional trigger that can hinder learning but also offers a powerful opportunity for growth. Through iterative research, I studied how children respond to frustration and created this framework addresses these gaps by creating an environment where children can safely simulate and process emotions through guided play and social collaboration. It acts like an “emotional vaccine”—allowing children to encounter, navigate, and process challenging emotions in a controlled, supportive setting. This helps them build emotional resilience and adaptability, preparing them for real-life situations when their fight-or-flight response is triggered. Caregivers receive tailored insights and recommendations, promoting awareness and encouraging them to reflect on their own emotional patterns, fostering growth for both children and adults.
Stats
Bounce-back Rate:
> 46%
Session Adherence:
> 90%
User Satisfaction:
> 95%
Year
2018 - 2022
My role
Founder
Team
Researcher 3
Data Analyst 2
Front-end Engineer 2
Volunteer 4
I: Learning Mechanism and Environment Setting
Design Principles
The foundational design principles of the learning environment and the mechanisms promoting self-driven regulation and self-directed learning motivation. By designing an open-ended, child-centered environment with flexible materials such as blocks and versatile toys that can be used in myriad ways. It emphasizes open-ended play, where children aged 3 - 7, engage in activities with mixed-aged peers and respond to structured prompts that intentionally introduce mild challenges and social conflicts.
Psychological Foundations
Children’s emotional resilience is built through repeated exposure to emotional experiences and learning how to process them effectively. According to Emotional Regulation Theory (Gross, 1998), emotional resilience involves recognizing, understanding, and modulating emotions rather than suppressing or avoiding them. When children encounter frustration during play, their brains often trigger the fight-or-flight response, temporarily compromising their cognitive control.
However, play itself provides a natural mechanism for emotional rehearsal. It’s like an “emotional vaccine”—through guided play and social interaction, children repeatedly simulate challenging emotions and practice regulating them in a controlled environment. This process helps them build neural pathways that enhance their ability to regain emotional balance and cognitive control during real-life stressors.
This framework intentionally integrates prompts that evoke various emotions, allowing children to process these feelings in a safe, structured setting. By learning to navigate frustration and conflict during play, children build emotional resilience that extends beyond the lab environment.
Core Theoretical Anchors:
• Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky): Highlights the importance of guided learning just beyond a child's current ability. The system leverages peer collaboration and adult observation to scaffold emotional and social learning.
• Growth Mindset (Carol Dweck): Echoed in my emphasis on embracing frustration and failure as necessary ingredients for learning and resilience.
• Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller): Informs the design of the dashboard and communication system—simplifying complexity so caregivers can absorb insights without being overwhelmed.
• Self-Determination Theory (Deci & Ryan): Drives the open-ended, autonomy-supportive learning environment. Children choose how to respond to prompts, developing intrinsic motivation through autonomy, competence, and relatedness.
• Social Identity Theory (Tajfel & Turner): Supports the design of mixed-age group play and collaborative challenges. Children build a sense of identity and belonging through social interaction and shared tasks.
• Emotional Regulation Theory (James Gross): Central to the lab's coding system—children process emotional states across stages, learning to regulate rather than suppress emotions.
• Constructivist Learning Theory (Piaget): Supports the open-ended play-based structure, where children build knowledge through hands-on experience and discovery.
Environment Setting
Open-Ended Environment: Children (with a maximum of 5 per session to ensure quality observation and individual attention) are provided with various open-ended materials but no strict rules.
Mixed-Age Collaboration: Children aged 3 - 7 participate together.
Prompts and Challenges: Activities are structured around daily prompts such as "Build a playground for both small and big animals" or "Design a house for a family of seven." Role-play tasks like "Lilly said she no longer wants to play with Jasmine because she broke her favorite toy" are also introduced. These prompts cover STEM domains, social conflict resolution, and creativity through playful but constructive invitation.
Some Prompt Tags Example:
STEM Challenge
Role-Play Conflict
Creative Storytelling
Collaborative Building
Peer Feedback
Incentive Structure: Children need to find their own partners, and the most diverse teams (in terms of age) are more likely to earn a surprise award at the end of play.
Emotional Journey Map for Children — Simplified Verson
II: System Architecture and Evaluation System
System Architecture Rationale
The architecture of the LumosMind Lab system was intentionally built around human emotion as a process, not just a state. Every layer—adaptive, scalable, and resilient—was chosen to reflect how real children grow: through cycles, setbacks, and breakthroughs.
• We prioritized modularity so that each behavioral element (e.g., crying, recovery, collaboration) could be independently tracked and recombined into different age-appropriate experiences.
• We structured observations around emotional states, not just task outcomes, so we could measure success not as completion, but as emotional integration.
• We designed feedback loops between child and caregiver not as reports, but as relationship tools, ensuring that the system served both ends of the learning dynamic.
We manually coded the systems (Excel-based) to stay close to the data, ensuring interpretability, transparency, and ethical alignment. The structure was built to evolve, not to impress. It was built to hold human messiness, not flatten it.
Ultimately, this architecture is a bridge—between observable behavior and emotional meaning, between research and play, between child and caregiver.
Data Encoding
Evaluation Metrics for Insight Generation
The foundament question I asked myself before designing this system is that: "How do we honor genuine growth in kids—especially neurodivergent kids—when their progress may not show up in the metrics?" So one of the key decisions is that Instead of measuring success as binary (Success vs. Unresolved), we created growth tiers:
Tier 0 = Withdrawal / No Engagement
Tier 1 = Stayed present
Tier 2 = Showed signs of self-soothing or reflection
Tier 3 = Engaged partially or with support
Tier 4 = Independent integration
This lets us track micro-wins that are HUGE for some kids.
Emotional Processing Score (EPS):
Measures how effectively a child processes emotions, with a high EPS shows that a child is able to effectively process and integrate emotions rather than remaining stuck in distress or unresolved states. Low EPS might suggest the child is unable to regulate their emotions effectively or requires more guidance to reach integration.
Resolution Success Rate (RSR):
Indicates how often children reach successful integration, useful for tracking improvement over time. A high RSR suggests the child is effectively moving from emotional disturbance to resolution in most scenarios. A low score may indicate difficulty in regulating emotions or completing emotional processing cycles. (To protect confidentiality and intellectual property, I will not disclose more design logic here. However, I welcome any collaboration opportunities and am happy to discuss further if interested.)
Help-Seeking Index (HSI):
Assesses social resilience, tracking whether children are effectively seeking help when needed. A higher HSI indicates a child is effectively using social resources to regulate emotions, while a lower HSI may suggest difficulties in reaching out for help or relying only on self-soothing.
Emotional Adaptability Ratio (EAR + ):
This one is more focused on "Did the child show signs of emotional progress—even if they didn’t finish?. " Measures adaptability across diverse challenges, indicating flexibility in emotional processing. A high EAR+ shows strong adaptability, which is essential for building emotional resilience in real-world, unpredictable scenarios. A low EAR+ suggests a child may be rigid in their coping mechanisms and require targeted support to enhance emotional flexibility. (To protect confidentiality and intellectual property, I will not disclose this design logic here. However, I welcome any collaboration opportunities and am happy to discuss further if interested.)
System Coding Layers
Adaptive Layer – Learns with the Learner
Foundation: Built on simple but meaningful observation protocols. We manually defined behavioral markers (like frustration, help-seeking, recovery) and mapped them to phases (Acknowledgment, Processing, Integration).
Tools Used: Excel tables to capture sessions; over time, patterns were manually reviewed to detect growth curves and adaptation points.
Logic: The prompts weren’t static—they were varied in complexity and emotional trigger potential. If a child handled a prompt well, the next week offered something more open-ended or socially complex.
Design Principle: The system doesn’t “grade” a child—it tracks their rhythm. We observed what kind of challenge triggered growth, and adjusted accordingly.
Scalable Layer – Grows with the Framework
Foundation: From the start, our observation categories and emotional stages were modular—they could be expanded, added, or collapsed based on the child’s age or educator input.
Tools Used: A clear codebook defined every data point, from “duration in processing” to “conflict style.” These were consistent across sessions and children.
Logic: Designed all prompts in formats that could be swapped in and out, making it easy to adapt for other researchers or age groups.
Design Principle: Don’t build a single-use tool. Build a living protocol that can travel and resue.
Resilient Layer – Sustains Through Change
Foundation: Built on emotional logic, not just behavior. We assumed that setbacks (e.g., crying, quitting) were part of growth, not interruptions.
Tools Used: Built space into the documentation to record emotional shifts, not just task outcomes. This meant including “child refused to rejoin” or “self-soothed after 8 minutes” as valid, valuable data.
Logic: Because the system focused on phases of emotional processing, it could still function even if the setting, toys, or team changed. It was built around the child’s experience, not the environment.
Design Principle: Build for turbulence. Growth is not linear, and the system needs to accommodate real human rhythms.
Model Pipeline and Interaction Flow
Fairness, Accuracy, Privacy, and Ethical Considerations
Normalization: Compare children’s performance against age-appropriate expectations.
Contextualization: Consider the impact of prompt type and social environment.
Qualitative Validation: Cross-check generated insights with recorded qualitative observations.
Data Privacy: Ensuring all collected data is securely stored and anonymized when necessary.
Ethical Guidelines: Safeguarding children’s privacy and ensuring data collection is non-intrusive.
Transparency: Providing caregivers and educators with clear information on data usage and collection processes.
III: Communication for Continuous Improvement
Communicating Insights to Caregivers — Cognitive Profiling Dashboard
The system delivers insights through user-friendly dashboards and automated reports. These include:
• Visual Summaries: Charts and graphs highlighting progress across various metrics (EPS, RSR, HSI, EAR).
• Personalized Reports: Narrative feedback explaining the child's unique strengths and areas for improvement.
• Recommended Activities: Tailored suggestions for home-based interventions to enhance resilience-building.
• Progress Tracking: Comparison graphs showing improvement or regression over time.
• Collaboration Tools: Allowing caregivers to provide feedback and track progress over time.
Insight Generation & Recommendations Logic
Using the established metrics (EPS, RSR, HSI, EAR), the system generates detailed insights for caregivers. These insights are crucial for reinforcing resilience-building practices at home and guiding caregivers in effectively supporting their child's emotional and cognitive development. To protect confidentiality and intellectual property, I will not disclose the system design logic here. However, I welcome any collaboration opportunities and am happy to discuss further if interested.
Key Takeaways From This Meaningful Journey
Emotional Growth Through Challenge
True satisfaction and growth come from processing difficult emotions and achieving resolution. Children who learn to embrace frustration, confusion, and other tough emotions through guided play develop resilience that extends beyond the lab.
Intuitive, User-Centric Design
By applying cognitive load theory and emotional regulation principles, the dashboard transforms complex insights into accessible, actionable guidance for caregivers, enhancing user experience and engagement.
Holistic Approach
The framework addresses not just children’s emotional resilience but also caregiver awareness and feedback, fostering growth for both parties in a sustainable, research-backed way.
Data-Driven Insights Made Simple
Visual tools like radial progress bars, badges, and interactive cards provide caregivers with clear, motivating, and actionable feedback, bridging the gap between research insights and practical application.
Self Reflection
This adaptive learning framework is structured around three pillars: the learning mechanism and environment setting, a robust coding and evaluation system, and effective communication with caregivers. Together, these components foster emotional resilience, creativity, and strategic thinking in young children.
Reflecting on this journey, I realize this project was not just about building a system for children’s emotional growth—it was also a transformative learning process for myself. It taught me how to create frameworks that balance structure with adaptability, research with intuition, and technology with empathy. This experience has become the cornerstone of my approach to designing systems and products aimed at enhancing human potential, creativity, and resilience.