TADAA! A DESIGN PROJECT BY ME
I actually won an award for this, the 'Region Skåne Design Award for Recent Graduates' in 2016. Crazy but true.
Tadaa! was a my major design project at the Graphic Design program at Malmö University. It was an app that I designed to assist children with autism in their daily life. It was a big project, and I will update this portfolio with the design process shortly, but for now I will give you a brief presentation of the final result.
What my goal was with this app, was to design a cool looking app for kids with autism. There were none. There were indeed apps to assist with daily lives, but they looked horrible or (in my opinion) degrading. They also did not take the difference in perception in autism into consideration.
It is very common with autism be very sensitive to impressions, when it comes to the different senses. For example sharp visual contrast may hurt the eyes. Designers generally have a tendency to choose bright colours for everything when designing for kids, but in this case it may not be the best approach. I could write a novel about this so I better stop here. As I said, I will add more about this project soon.
The main features are, referring to the screens below, the following:
1. Daily view. Here you can see the users' daily schedule, centered on the activity that is currently taking place. Above and below this, you can see recent and future activities. On the current activity there is also an optional timer, that shows how much time is left on the activity. Stars can be collected for successfully completion.
2. Daily overview. Here the user can se an overview of the day, and the daily plan. The little rocket indicating the current activity.
3. Lists. This is a little library of lists that can come in handy for routines. Such as how to do something, or what to remember to put in the backpack.
4. Timer. For time management.
5. Reward screen. Here all rewards for the successfully completed activities are collected, with a clear goal of a real life award when enough stars are collected.
Below is a presentation and explanation of how the app is supposed to be used (prototyped in Adobe XD). It is in Swedish, I'm afraid, but I hope that english speakers can make some sense of it too.
It was a big project, and every design decision is based on tons of research and user input, to make an app specifically for autistic users, who's perception (among other things) works a little bit differently than in neurotypical brains.
