You + Me
Educational App and Responsive Website to teach children about emotions and empathy. Especially for children on the Autism Spectrum
Problem Statement
Children with autism need age appropriate programs to practice social skills and empathy that can also be used in the classroom by teachers. My goal was to provide an app that children can use to learn empathy and emotions that will not feel infantilizing to school age children with autism and also gamify the experience so that children stay motivated.
User Research
I performed preliminary interviews with children with autism as well as neurotypical children to ascertain what they look for and enjoy in an educational app.
Most interview subjects reported that apps they had tried for learning empathy and social skills seemed geared toward younger kids. They reported that this made them dislike using them.
Feedback made it clear that there is a gap in the market for an empathy and social skills app for older children. I also reviewed research from Harvard and Parentscience.com into the best practices for teaching empathy to children.
Competitive Audit
Not many emotion and empathy apps exist for school age children so other educational apps for the same age group were included.
Ideation
I did an initial ideation exercise for the home page of the dedicated app. Focusing on finding a design that would be appealing and not overwhelming for Autistic Children
Digital Wireframes
After Ideating and creating paper wireframes I moved on to a digital wireframe. I was focused on making a clean and simple design that would not be overwhelming to children with sensory impairments.To keep users engaged and coming back each day a system of rewards has been included. When the child finishes their tasks they can choose a sticker to customize their avatar’s room. On the avatar customization screen users can select a category from the right and then select objects from a scrolling menu on the bottom. Their customized avatar will appear in daily activities
Usability Study
An unmoderated usability study was conducted with 5 children both autistic and neurotypical. After synthesizing the results I found two opportunities for improvement.
1. The avatar's room felt too busy and chaotic so we simplified it in our next iteration.
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2. Users want it to be clear where to click to move through the user journey. Children may not always understand the conventions of app icons the way adults do
Case
Study