Insights & Reflections

Name of
Candidate:
Randy Julian Class: 13S17
Project Task (No.):
(2) Choice

Group
Index No:

Group Project
Title:
Tug of Hearts

My groups project aims to discourage divorce by highlighting the negative impact of
divorce to their children. I will examine the approach and strategies that may affect
the effectiveness of my project.

Although our approach on changing mindset is important to forge better
understanding between couples
1
, upon consideration, we did not include an effective
way in which the couple can communicate to one another. Since communication
affects marital outcomes
2
, without a proper way to relate to one another, the project
will also be ineffective in stopping divorce.

Therefore, I propose to add another approach, Improving Communication, to
strengthen relationship between couples. The strategy that follows will be a creation
of phone app HeartTalk, a shared calendar of the couple and their childs events.
This will enable the couple to keep track of their childs activities. A separate chat
room for couples and children will also be created to facilitate the communication.
However, the duration of chat with the children will be dependent on how often the
couples chat room is being used. The more often it is being used, the longer the
duration of chat with child is available.

However, these are all cognitive communication. From our interview, we have also
found out that emotional communication are often lacking from a divorcing couple
3
.
This will cause communication to be insignificant in building connections between
the couple
4
.

As such, there will be another feature of the phone app which will address the
emotional communication. The user will have to write the specific condition in the
diary for each day in order to increase the duration of chat with their child.








1
McIsaac, H., & Finn, C. (1999). Parents beyond Conflict: A cognitive restructuring model for high-conflict familes in
divorce. Family and conciliation courts review, 37(1), 74-83.
2
Johnson, M.D., Cohan, C.L., Davila, J., Lawrence, E., Rogge, R.D., Karney, B.R., Sullivan, K.T., & Bradbury, T.N. (2005).
3
Interview with Mr Stanley Judah. Couples start off with emotional communication but eventually it reduces
to cognitive communication and they often cannot relate to one another emotionally.
4
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/anger-in-the-age-entitlement/201002/marriage-problems-how-
communication-techniques-can-make-the


Insights & Reflections
Monday 1 thing that you hate from your spouse
Tuesday 1 thing that you love from your spouse
Wednesday An occurrence that you face today
Thursday The pain of being in a divorce
Friday How your life is better without your
spouse
Saturday How your life is worse off without your
spouse
Table 1: The proposed requirements that users have to fulfill by each day

Only the message from Tuesday and Friday will be sent to their spouses so as to
improve their condition and remind them of their courtship days.

Although reflection and learning point have been created for our strategy, the
learning points might not be internalize by the users as the reflection rely heavily on
the users awareness of the severity of the issue. This may cause our project to be
ineffective as it fails to deal with the problem to realize the inappropriate comments.

As such, I propose additional features to the existing solutions. There will be a limit
of 5 times a month for the siren to be deactivated, if the quarrels exceed the limit,
then the siren will only be switched off if the users make a call to the counselor to
book for an appointment. This serves to ensure that the users are aware of their
problem and they will internalize the knowledge by not engaging in loud quarrel.





Johnson, M.D., Cohan, C.L., Davila, J., Lawrence, E., Rogge, R.D., Karney, B.R.,
Sullivan, K.T., & Bradbury, T.N. (2005). Problem-solving skills and affective
expressions as predictors of change in marital satisfaction. Journal of Consulting and
Clinical Psychology, 73, 1527

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