Crafting Emotional Authenticity: A Design Thinking Approach to Developing a Practical Deep Acting Tool for Emotional Labor

This paper presents a pioneering application of Design Thinking principles to create a tangible Emotional Labor toolkit, focusing on deep acting as a sustainable emotion regulation strategy in professional contexts. Surface acting, prevalent in Emotional Labor, can lead to burnout and undermine well-being. Drawing from Design Thinking's human-centric approach to creative problem-solving, the toolkit harnesses three key facets - Empathy, Definition, and Ideation - to foster Empathy, Awareness, and Cognitive Reappraisal in deep acting emotion regulation. Incorporating insights from literature on emotion authenticity and regulation, the toolkit underwent iterative prototyping and testing, including two rounds of pre-pilot playtesting with smaller groups for refinement. The pilot toolkit, designed for experiential learning, involved 20 participants in a play test simulating diverse life scenarios across various age groups. Tasks involved demonstrating empathy in challenging situations and utilizing cognitive reappraisal with emotional vocabulary as tools. Data collection via observation and thematic analysis assessed Empathy Expression, Cognitive Reappraisal Effectiveness, and Affect Labels Expansion (Awareness). A post-play survey measured participant experiences, confidence, and growth in these domains. This study offers a comprehensive account of toolkit development, refinement, and validation, with the aim of providing the industry with a practical and accessible resource for emotional labor.