Pondr
A web platform designed to help children with Autism build emotional intelligence.
The Basics
When: Winter 2020
What: Fourth-year group project
Role: Product Designer
The Tools
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
The Problem
The final semester-long project of our university career focused on finding a way to improve education. This brief was based on one of the 17 United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. In the beginning, everyone in the class needed to pitch an idea related to improving education. The winning pitches could then become the focus of a team’s project.
The original video pitch I gave that was accepted related to creating a web platform for youth in Canada that are in foster care to create a safe level of transparency between the student and teacher. This means that students can get the support they need from educators.
The entire project was broken up into three iterations. This agile way of working helped promote rapid prototyping and testing so that we could get valuable feedback to improve the next iteration. Each round provided essential insights that helped the team get to the final product which, as you can see, is a bit different than what I had in mind in the beginning.
The Process
Most of us didn’t have a lot of knowledge about our demographic, so extensive user research and testing were crucial to the success of our project. My role as the Product Designer meant taking on both UX and UI Designer responsibilities. I facilitated project workshops at least twice each week which included things like Crazy Eights and Mindmapping. For each workshop, I would prepare research and present it to the team and provide a direction for everyone to look deeper into.
Iteration #1
In the first iteration, our team focused on a web platform for children in the foster care system so that they could share personal information with their teachers. This included features such as sharing daily emotions, medical information, and scheduled absences. The original goal was to create a safe level of transparency between students and their teachers.
To better understand our problem, we conducted extensive interviews with 6 SME’s and shared a survey reaching over 70 people. This included everyone from teachers, principals, parents, social workers, and more. We wanted to understand what would be valuable to these individuals in improving the education quality for children in foster care. We asked each SME a set of questions as well as presented a rudimentary mockup made with Adobe XD of what we had in mind so far.
One of the biggest learnings from this round was the need and value for students to be able to self-report their feelings. Individuals liked the idea of being able to regularly understand how children were feeling so that they could appropriately engage with and support them.
Iteration #2
In the second iteration, we narrowed down our demographic and focused on creating a web platform designed for students aged four to ten that would improve their emotional intelligence. This is because after synthesizing information using an Affinity Diagram, we realized that the product we were creating was something that could benefit the education quality of all students, including those in foster care.
In this round, I created a higher fidelity prototype and ran user testing with over 30 individuals. The feedback was very useful and helped us better identify our key activities.
During this round, we also struggled to identify a strong value proposition and revenue stream, so we reached out to an SME who designs digital products for children to help us. When meeting, we articulated the purpose of our product and our current demographic. During this discussion, we realized that children who are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) would greatly benefit from exactly what we were creating.
The Solution
Iteration #3
For the final iteration, the team focused on creating a web platform for children ages 4 to 10 in Canada and the US that are diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The platform makes learning about and expressing emotions a fun and non-intrusive activity that helps build emotional intelligence and connections between parents and their children. A full rationale for business and design choices was also created.
My main responsibilities were to create wireframes, conduct user testing, and create the final high-fidelity prototype. The wireframes were created using Adobe XD to help articulate the direction for the final product.
Some things we kept in mind when designing for children with Autism:
1. Colourful and bold designs can be overwhelming.
2. Consistency and routine significantly improve user experiences.
3. Language needs to be clear and without the need for interpretation.
4. Needs can vary drastically between children on the spectrum, so a customizable experience is necessary.
A brand guideline was created by our Visual Designer, alongside some the graphics used in the final product.
The final product we created included a company website and a fully interactive, high-fidelity web prototype.
The company website was designed to educate individuals on what Pondr is and explain how everything works. It’s a place to get questions answered
The final product is designed to provide audio, visuals, and text to explain emotions, as well as how to respond appropriately to them.
The environment I focused on creating included errorless learning, clear instructions, and logical processes. Pondr allows children to self-report how they are feeling, which can be shared with their parents or guardian. Parents can view how their child feels and create a personalized experience by selecting and controlling accessibility features like fonts, colours, and audio cues.
By developing emotional intelligence within children, specifically those with ASD, our team is encouraging empathetic behaviour that could offer cathartic and transformative benefits. In essence, the ability to connect and empathize is critical to quality education and Pondr helps children do that in a way that is inclusive for all.
Retrospective
Overall, this project had a very interesting progression. It started as a way for foster children to communicate with their teachers in a more discreet way and ended up being a platform to help children with ASD. Through guidance and recommendations from professionals, we learned that children with ASD in the early stages of development would find a lot of benefit in learning about emotions and how to manage their own.
This project taught me a lot about understanding your users, for real. It made me truly understand that UX design can make or break an experience. This project was a significant learning experience as a designer and reminded me that design really can’t be just about making something pretty. If I was to revisit this project, I would continue more user testing to improve the experience even more.