The HUB: Designing an Interactive Social Space for Pre-Adolescents' Well-being

Friendships are a fundamental source of support during challenging times, especially among pre-adolescents. The current pandemic situation makes it even harder to rely on support from their peers or strengthen friendships. To accompany and support pre-adolescents outside of school at a moment where most interactions happen online, we propose the HUB, a novel online interactive social space. The HUB is a safeguarded and monitored social space which seeks to improve social well-being and positive reinforcement practices between peers by design. This paper's key contributions derived from designing the HUB are threefold: an online social space which follows an iterative user-centered design approach; it is grounded on a theoretical model of friendship development to scaffold interactions of dyadic relationships that occur on the HUB; and it employs a set of gamification strategies, such as quests, achievements and rewards to keep pre-adolescents motivated, and, particularly, an acknowledgement system that encourages peers to work on, and acknowledge, character strengths and social skills in others, which are fundamental for their development as individuals.