UI design, UX design, branding, front-end development
Product designer (sole designer on team)
April 2021 - Present
For children with special needs such as autism, a well structured routine can be very important. Unexpected, sudden changes may cause a great deal of stress, and therefore it is important to be able to see what events are coming up well in advance. Children may also struggle with reading or telling the time if they have a learning disability, which makes it difficult for them to understand conventional calendars. AVC Calendar combines large visuals with spoken text on a weekly calendar format, reducing the amount of necessary reading and empowering the child to know what is coming up in the week ahead.
Note: This app was previously named Autism AVC and was renamed to AVC Calendar at the end of June 2021.
For children with developmental disabilities, physical schedules fall short if the child has difficulty reading words and dates. Using purely visual depictions for events (i.e. photos) also introduces ambiguity, which may lead to further stress for the child for what may already be a stressful event coming up.
AVC Calendar was created as a solution to this issue, by combining visual elements with spoken words to eliminate the need for reading altogether. In addition, the app empowers the child to react to events by selecting an "emoji", and provides positive encouragement to the child by reminding them of fun upcoming events.
I joined this project as the sole designer to help improve the visual design and user experience of the application. I worked alongside a team of 4 Tokyo-based developers, creating mockups for the designs in Figma and helping to implement the new styles using HTML and SASS. In addition, I also helped to implement new features such as photo search via Unsplash, and worked with the project lead on a strategy for the soft launch.
When I joined the project in April 2021, the team had already created a working calendar application, with the ability to display and read out events, as well as assign a mood value to each event. My main job was to improve the visual design of the application to make it more appealing to children of all ages, identify potential accessibility issues, and improve the overall user experience to ensure the least amount of friction, especially on the child’s side. I was also entrusted with creating a new homepage design to introduce the application, to make it easier to attract new parents and caretakers.
This project was originally conceived as a digital version of the whiteboard schedule that the project lead had been using at home for his daughter, as seen below.
The development team had already built a solid foundation before I joined the team, so I re-designed the components of the app to look more modern without any major changes to the base layout.
My first step in creating the new visual style was to identify the ideal target audience for the application. The app was conceived and designed originally for young children with autism; however, upon discussion, we expanded the target user to encompass children of all ages with special needs and their caretakers. Therefore, the visual design needed to be flexible to accommodate everyone on the spectrum, friendly yet not condescending to appeal to kids of all ages, while maintaining a level of maturity for the caretaker as well.
Using Figma, I created a simple design system to use across the application and for future expansions.
For the initial re-design, I chose a light navy and gray color scheme to keep the design neutral, with rounded motifs and bold lettering to introduce an element of playfulness. I also created a custom set of "emoji" to use for the rating system, to add a bit of personal touch to the design.
The visual design needed to be flexible, friendly, and not condescending to be accessible to children of all ages and their caretakers.
Since autism and other sensory processing disorders vary so much by the individual, I kept the number of colors used to a minimum, to make it easy to introduce different color themes in the future. I also made sure to leave plenty of space in the UI for design variants of differing lengths and sizes, for example, the ability to toggle on/off descriptive text in event cards and buttons for children who prefer to read.
Because the team had already created a solid foundation before I joined, there was little to fix for the user flow of the MVP. Therefore, I skipped the wireframe step and went straight to creating high fidelity designs using the design system I had set up.
The beta version of the AVC Calendar app launched at the end of June 2021 to parents, educators, and healthcare professionals.
We plan to reach out to parents of children with special needs to get specific feedback and advice, as well as suggestions for future features. In addition, we are in contact with behavioral psychologists and other experts in the field to get their expert advice on further improvements that we can make to the app.
In addition, we are working on planning out “phase 2” of the application, which will include features such as:
I continue to learn every day as I create the designs for this application, and working on this application has made me think hard about what accommodations we can make as designers to make the internet more accessible to people of all ages and abilities. In particular, designing for young children has taught me to think about what is really necessary to get an idea across, and what is extraneous information. For example, being sure to use universal imagery that isn’t misleading, writing concise UX text, and allowing the user to control the level of information and the way that information is presented, all lead to a more accessible design.
If you like what you see and want to work together, get in touch!
qiuning.huang@gmail.com