Objectives

Identify user pain points and usability challenges faced by children with special needs and their caregivers when interacting with existing speech therapy tools.

Design an intuitive interface for children and their caregivers. It should be fun and engaging, while also including accessibility features for children with disabilities.

Make the platform more engaging for children with special needs by adding visual, auditory, and kinesthetic elements, addressing the limitations of physical flashcards.

Competitor Analysis

To better understand the market landscape and identify opportunities for differentiation, we conducted a thorough competitive analysis. We analyzed both direct and indirect competitors, including apps like Bitsboard, Speech Blubs, and Quizlet, to assess their strengths, weaknesses, and the gaps our platform can fill.

User Persona

In our research, we created multiple user personas to represent the diverse needs of children with special needs. These personas helped us to empathize with our users and tailor our platform to their specific challenges and goals. While we developed two personas, today I will be sharing Bennie’s story. Bennie is a 9-year-old boy with autism who is nonverbal. Bennie can walk independently, but he requires assistance and supervision for activities such as showering and eating. He has a deep love for music and responds positively to visual stimuli.

Through the User's Eyes

The user storyboard below shows how our persona, Bennie, uses a set of flashcards with his mother's help. By putting our persona in the ideal context scenario, we can get a better idea of what our target user needs and expects. This helps us figure out what our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) should have. Right now, we're trying to make a list of all the things we need to make these ideal situations happen. These requirements will be the basis for our idea generation phase, guiding the development of our educational platform to meet our users' needs.

The Challenge

The app must be appealing and easy to navigate for kids, and encourage them to use it on their own while still helping them learn.

It's important to create fun, age-appropriate content that captures children's attention while also meeting their individual learning needs.

We need to implement a system for tracking a child's progress and providing feedback to caregivers that they can actually use.

Key Features & Solutions

Designing the Flashcard Categories

This page is all about sets of flashcards that are tailored to specific categories. It has the same structure as the category page. At first, I thought about having only one flashcard that you could click on at a time, with the others unlocking after you'd successfully completed the first set. But after chatting with the parents of children with disabilities, we realised that this approach might be a bit frustrating for the kids, given their medical conditions.

Optimizing Flashcard Interaction

A child is presented with a series of flashcards, followed by a question designed to prompt them to identify a specific concept. For example, the child may be asked to select the picture that represents 'bedroom'. Once the child has made their choice, they receive feedback indicating whether their response was correct or incorrect.

Simplifying Category Navigation

When I started putting together the page with categories, I wanted to make it as simple as possible for little ones to understand. Each category has a bunch of lessons, and I've paired the names with images to make it easy to see what each one is about. I thought some kids might not know all the big words (category names) or find reading a bit tricky, so I've included pictures that show exactly what each category is about – like a tomato for "Vegetables" and a hand for "Body parts."

Learnings