Sakshee Jaiswal

2023

User Research

Interface Design

Branding

Illustration

The playful path to clear talk

Elo is a mobile companion for parents raising children with autism, offering playful and adaptive exercises for simplified communication therapy reinforcement at home.

why this project?

In light of the rising prevalence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in India, there is a need for inclusive solutions that empower neurodivergent children to navigate their lives with greater ease. Speech and communication impairments are one of the common challenges associated with ASD, significantly impacting a child's development, quality of life, and independence as an adult.

This project focuses on alleviating specific communication barriers that impede the social and academic development of neurodivergent children. It aims to identify and develop solutions that can empower them to engage more effectively with their peers, educators, and caregivers and lead more fulfilling lives.

Key Concerns

For Children :

Social Isolation due to impaired communication, Emotional dysregulation and Academic Delays and Limited Skill Development.

For Caregivers :

Lack of accessible and effective communication therapy support, Caregiver Strain due to increased Behavioral Challenges.

Key Objectives

Investigate the communication challenges faced by children with autism and their caregivers in various social, educational, and life settings.

Explore the potential and scope of alternative and supplementary support to current intervention approaches.

Create a comprehensive and accessible solution to enhance communication development or children with autism.

Process

Discover

Primary Research: Areas of Enquiry

Stakeholders in Communication Therapy

Attitudes and Awareness

Roles & Responsibilities

Key Challenges

Communication & Collaboration

Current Practices

and Methodologies

Communication Therapy Approaches

Key Challenges in Implementation

Key considerations for developing Learning Programs

Scope for Innovation

Suggestions from Experts

Explore Technology Aided Therapy

Benefits and Challenges of using different Technologies

Research Insights

In conversation with Parents

Q. Do you currently work with a therapist or counselor to support your child's communication skills?

88%

12%

Q. How often do you practice the communication skills your child learns in therapy sessions outside of therapy?

Never

Rarely

Sometimes

Often

Always

12%

50%

25%

12%

Q. What are the main challenges you face in reinforcing your child's communication skills at home?

“Finding the time is the biggest challenge. There's just so much to juggle between work, other commitments, and taking care of everyone's needs at the same time.”

#Practice and Time Management

“There's just so much conflicting information out there that i can’t tell which one is right for my child, by the time I try to figure it all out I just don't know how to and where to start”

# Tailor to individual needs

Tap to view notes

Insight #1

Parents of nonverbal autistic children often struggle with information overload, decision fatigue and managing time for practicing with children.

Existing communication interventions don’t reach their full potential due to lack of consistent practice outside therapy sessions. This hinders progress at desired pace.

In conversation with Therapists

Q. Can you describe the range of sensory modalities that your communication interventions integrate to enhance communication skills?

Vision

Hearing

Touch

Smell

Taste

100%

12%

25%

12%

Q. What types of interactive learning approaches have you used?

Picture Books

Flashcards

Picture Boards

Picture Exchange Communication System

Q. What are some of the challenges you have faced in implementing learning approaches for individuals with autism?

“Since every child's need is different, we often have to think on our feet and resort to create our own resources but it can be very time-consuming and takes away time from our primary job.”

# Tailor to individual needs

“Learning materials are essential but a lot of them are very expensive and inflexible which cannot be adapted to the needs of each child and large scale adoption within and outside professional clinics is hence limited”

# Inflexible learning materials

Tap to view Notes

Insight #2

Since every child's need is different, educators often have to create learning materials themselves that are often rudimentary in nature and cannot be adapted widely to benefit more children with similar needs.

Visual-based learning approaches have demonstrated consistent effectiveness in communication interventions for individuals with autism, offering a range of techniques to harness their power.

Q. Do your communication interventions plans utilize digital tools or software programs?

Yes

92%

Q. If no, Why not?

Cannot replace benefits of Traditional therapy

Not widely adopted/ standardized

Too restrictive and not flexible

Q. What are the main challenges faced in developing and implementing innovative or technology based solutions for communication interventions?

“Technology-based solutions cannot completely replace one on one therapy, but it can be supplemented with traditional approaches especially with parents and caregivers at home who would benefit from easier solutions”

#Supplement traditional approaches

“Innovations are done many times over by different practitioners but unfortunately rarely get shared because of professional gatekeeping and it's hard to adapt makeshift methods for wider use or evaluating their effectiveness.”

#scalability

Insight #3

The full potential of technology integration in communication interventions for individuals with autism remains untapped locally due to accessibility and affordability constraints and therapist concerns regarding standardization and effectiveness.

Other Insights

In most cases, the primary caregivers are mothers who are often juggling multiple responsibilities at home and may have limited time and capacity for independent research and implementing interventions at home.

Speech Language Disorders are prevalent across the neurodiversity spectrum, extending beyond autism, and can be effectively managed using common therapy interventions.

Shortage of special educators in special schools limits the individualised support and overburden existing educators.

Project Goals

Create a user-friendly and visually-based communication intervention program that minimizes information overload and decision fatigue for caregivers, particularly mothers with limited time and resources. Ideate additional frameworks for support from other caregivers.

# Ease of use

# Collaborative Practice

# Visual aided learning

Maximize the potential of technology for communication interventions by developing a program that integrates seamlessly with existing therapy practices and addresses therapist concerns regarding standardization and effectiveness.

#Supplement traditional approaches

# Data driven

# Sharing Resources

Design a program that promotes consistent and targeted practice outside therapy sessions, fostering faster progress for children with communication disorders.

# Performance tracking

#Tailor to individual needs

#Practice & Time Management

Competive Analysis

Goals

# Visual aided communication

#Speech Development Activities

#Practice Management

#Goal setting

# Progress tracking

# Performance tracking

# Data driven

# Low-cost

# Community Support

#Tailored to individual needs

#Customizable activities

#Activity planning

#Ability to add other collaborators

# Cross platform support

# Ease of use

#Local Language Support

Proloquo2go

Awaz

Otsimo

Speech bubs

Jellow AAC

AutiSpark

Articulation Station

Leelo AAC

Define

User Personas

Caregiver

Maneesha

35, Stay-at-home mom

Children : 1

Goals

Help her child improve their communication skills in all areas (e.g., expressive and receptive language, pragmatics).

Learn new strategies for supporting her child's communication development in all settings (e.g., at home, school, community).

Reduce her stress and anxiety about supporting her child's communication development.

Find fun and engaging methods of reinforcement for learning.

Follow a consistent schedule of practicing the skills with her child.

Connect with other parents of autistic children to share experiences and support.

Pain Points

Her child's communication needs are complex, and she feels overwhelmed and unsure of how to best support them.

Existing speech therapy tools and methods are often complex and difficult to understand, and they don't always meet the individual needs of her child.

She doesn't have a lot of time to spend on lesson planning or to learn new teaching strategies.

The lack of support from others, coupled with the demands of primary caregiving, can lead to feelings of isolation and stress.

Needs and Preferences

Maneesha needs a solution that is easy to use and that allows her to quickly and easily find appropriate activities for her child.

She would also like a solution that provides her with tips and guidance on how to support her child's communication development at home.

She prefers a solution that is affordable and accessible.

Deven

38, Marketing Manager

Children : 2

Goals

Support his wife by sharing the responsibility of caring for their autistic child.

Effectively support his child's development and understand him better.

Build stronger bonds with his child through productive interactions.

Use a tool that tracks his child's progress and identifies areas where he needs additional support.

Pain Points

Feels overwhelmed and frustrated when he is unable to understand what his child is trying to communicate.

Feels burdened by the high costs of therapy and learning materials.

Feels guilty about missing out on important bonding opportunities due to his demanding work commitments.

Worries that he is not using the right strategies or techniques to help his child learn and grow.

Fears the challenges that his child may face in the future and feels helpless to prevent them.

Needs and Preferences

Needs a solution that enables him to contribute to his child's learning in an effective manner.

Would like a solution that can create positive engagement with his child.

Prefers a solution that can help him measure his child's progress.

Child

Dhruv

3, Autism with ADD

Non Verbal, beginning to communicate using gestures and vocalizations

Goals

To learn to communicate basic needs and wants and be understood.

To reduce frustration and anxiety when unable to communicate his wants and needs.

To learn to use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) devices when unable to speak.

To learn to follow what is being communicated by others.

Pain Points

Dhruv feels frustrated and experiences frequent meltdowns when unable to communicate needs and wants.

He has difficulty understanding and following instructions.

He has difficulty paying attention to and completing tasks.

He is unable to interact with peers and family members in a coherent manner.

Needs and Preferences

He needs a fun and engaging learning tool that incorporates sights and sounds to help him learn.

He needs an easy and fun to use solution, that can effectively capture his attention.

It should familiarize and guide him towards effectively utilizing other speech generation devices without causing confusion.

It should provide opportunities for Dhruv to practice communication skills in various contexts.

Sara

5, Down syndrome

Uses single words and short phrases to communicate

Goals

Expand her vocabulary to express her needs, wants, and ideas more effectively.

Construct more complex sentences to convey her thoughts and experiences in greater detail.

Enhance her ability to engage in meaningful conversations with peers, family members, and educators.

Pain Points

Sara experiences frustration when her limited vocabulary and sentence structure hinder her ability to communicate her ideas and thoughts as clearly as she desires.

She feels a sense of exclusion when her peers engage in more complex and nuanced conversations, leaving her feeling isolated and unable to fully participate in social interactions.

Needs and Preferences

Sarah requires opportunities to practice and refine her communication skills in diverse contexts, including structured activities, informal interactions, and social engagements.

She needs challenging yet attainable activities that foster a sense of accomplishment and encourage further progress.

How might we help users reach their goal?

Provide parents with accessible and time-efficient practice guides and activities, along with goal-setting features and performance tracking tools, to facilitate effective home-based communication therapy for their children.

#Practice & Time Management

#Goal setting & Tracking

Create a user friendly digital tool that empowers parents to become active partners in their child's communication development journey by extending therapeutic practices beyond therapy sessions and reinforcing newly acquired skills at home utilising their already accessible mobile devices.

#Ease of Use/ Adoption

#Supplement traditional approaches

Partner with therapists to design and regularly update innovative activities and exercises, utilizing established data tracking methods to assess their impact.

# Data driven

#Provide Scalability

Develop interactive activities adapted to individual goals and skill levels, employing visual aids to improve the learning experience for communication, as substantiated by prior research.

# Visual aided learning

Provide caregivers with a structured yet user-friendly framework to seamlessly access, share, and create a vast repository of learning resources with a cost-efficient approach for continuous expansion.

#Resource-Sharing

# Low-cost

Develop a tool that can customize learning material and activities by altering specific metrics, such as time, visual complexity, and auditory input.

#Flexible Learning Materials

Enable sharing the learning program with other members to ensuring unhindered progress and shared responsibility for the child's development.

# Enable Collaboration

Utilize parental consent-based assessment data to create a comprehensive understanding of development profiles and provide a targeted learning experience.

#Tailor to individual needs

#Data driven

User Journey

Awareness

Onboarding

Practice

Tracking

Progression

User Goal

To learn more about how they can support their child.

To create an account and generate a personalized learning profile for the child

To practice communication skills with their child through engaging activities and exercises.

To record and review their child’s progress, share it with their therapist and adjust the therapy plan and goals as needed.

To gradually increase the complexity of communication and expand the communication skills of the child.

Process

The caregiver receives a referral for the app from the SLP/ABA Therapist.

The caregiver does Independent research on the internet or app store to find easy and effective guides to support their child.

The caregiver creates an account, goes through onboarding screens and completes a short assessment to generate a learning profile based on strenghths and weaknesses of their child.

The caregiver can access their child's personalised learning plan directly from the dashboard.

The dashboard provides convenient access to recommended activities and topics aligned with the child's current learning stage.

They can also view their daily practice target from the dashboard.

The caregiver can review their child's progress in specific areas that is worked upon and the milestone achievements with their progression. of skills.

The child advances through a sequence of activities and games tailored to their learning profile, gradually increasing in complexity. As they progress, they unlock and are recommended additional topics and activities aligned with their current learning stage.

Problems

Caregivers face challenges in navigating the vast amount of information available online and identifying the most relevant and reliable sources.

Caregivers may find the assessment too long.

The assessment's language may not be tailored to the caregivers' level of understanding, potentially resulting in misinterpretations and inaccurate responses.

Additionally, they may be concerned about the Subscription price, time commitment, and effectiveness of the app.

The caregiver may not understand how to use the learning profile and other recommendations and may experience confusion in determining the appropriate pace of progression for each skillset.

Caregivers may find the content of certain activities to be incongruent with their child's current context or interests,

Children may experience difficulty adapting to learning through a new medium.

Caregivers may lack the knowledge or guidance on effectively recording and interpreting their child's progress data,

Caregivers may face challenges in reviewing and making adjustments to the learning plan.

The caregiver may not know how to share their child's progress with the therapist.

The caregiver may need to revise the past learned skills regularly to not trigger regression.

They may also run out of content to practice with after completing the default set of activities added in their learning profile.

The caregiver may find themselves needing to supplement the default set of activities and topics with additional resources to effectively support their child's learning in various contexts.

Experience

Solutions

Develop a comprehensive online presence, either through a dedicated website or blog, that provides detailed information about the features, pricing, and unique selling proposition (USP) of the speech therapy app.

Additionally, showcase compelling evidence supporting the app's effectiveness in enhancing children's communication skills.

Employ straightforward and jargon-free conversational questions based on everyday language interactions for assessment purposes.

Offer a complimentary trial period for the app, allowing caregivers to experience its benefits and suitability before making a purchase decision.

Establish a comprehensive support system for caregivers, encompassing readily accessible FAQs, informative tutorials, and responsive customer support channels.

Display the daily goals on the dashboard and provide an intuitive user experience for the caregivers to begin the activity in single click from the dashboard.

Implement an adaptive learning algorithm that dynamically adjusts the pace of the learning plan based on the child's progression speed within each skillset

Introduce customization options within the predefined activities, allowing caregivers to modify content and other parameters to tailor the learning experience to the child's specific needs and preferences.

Design an engaging interactions and interface for the learning material for the children. Provide instant feedback from the interface to differentiate correct and incorrect inputs

Implement a clear and comprehensive progress dashboard that provides real-time insights into the child's overall performance and specific developmental milestones achieved in various areas and topics.

Enable the conversion of progress tracking data into a detailed report that can be readily shared with therapists, facilitating informed collaboration and treatment planning.

Incorporate an adaptive learning algorithm that dynamically adjusts the difficulty level of exercises within the learning plan, tailoring the educational experience to match the child's unique strengths and weaknesses identified through app usage.

Incorporate periodic revision activities into the learning plan, even as new activities are introduced, to ensure retention of previously learned skills.

Continuously update the app with fresh learning materials to maintain engagement and provide ongoing opportunities for growth.

Establish a resource creation and sharing platform that empowers caregivers to contribute their own activities and materials, fostering a collaborative learning environment.

Ideate

Low Fidelity Wireframes and Feedback

The active lesson and curriculum screen could be more informative if it displayed details about each lesson beyond just progress numbers. It would be helpful to see the lesson topics, vocabulary focus, or learning objectives.

Activity customization feature can be simplified further to not confuse caregivers with too many features which they can’t understand. Instead of that, few editable key metrics should only be kept.

The 'Recently Played' feature on the goals page is redundant and it could be more motivating if it instead showcased recently achieved milestones or breakthroughs which would provide a stronger sense of accomplishment.

Information Architecture

Screen

Parents Only Screen

Child Access Allowed

Action

Parent

Switch

Input

Decision

Onboarding

Assessment

Customize Items

Progress Insights

Picture Sets

Milestones

Activity Sets

Activity

Picture set

Upload images

Select Activity

Splash Screen

Dashboard

Active lesson

Recently Unlocked

Go to Activity

Browse Topics

Today’s Goal

Learning Plan

Sequential Lessons

Topic

Suggested

My Custom Sets

User Profiles

Child

Caregiver

Manage Subscription

Invite Member

Language

Sound

Notification

Tutorials

App Support

About

Analytics

Sets

Select Filter

Crop / Erase Background

Progress

Guide

Curriculum

Analytics

Add Ons

Settings

Create New

Activity

Create

New

Get Full

Report

Learn

Add / Buy

Play

Yes

Created

Curriculum

Created

Schedule

Add Member

Activity Type

Add Cover

Select Picture Set

Select Language

Edit Items

Design

Visual Design

Calming Visual design with simple rounded shapes, friendly colors and characters, and clear layouts to minimize overstimulation and empowering autistic children to focus on fun and learning.

Identity

Typography & Colors

Regular

Medium

Semi Bold