-Educational Products for Children with Neuro-developmental conditions
COVID-19 pandemic resulted in a nationwide lockdown which disrupted the therapeutic space,
where face-to-face therapy sessions for children with neurodiverse conditons at our
Brainpreneurs- child development centres. This gave us an opportunity to adopt innovative
strategies to mitigate regression and bolster the learning outcomes of children.
Our challenge was to design educational products to address the specific educational
needs
of children with neuro-developmental disabilities like Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dyslexia,
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), etc. Since my end-users were children with
special needs, and the therapists, my design thinking was deeply influenced by prioritizing
the importance of accessible education and ailored therapeutic interventions.
Therefore, I
began with general literature research on neurodiversity to have a nuanced
understanding and
design the optimum solution. The pandemic, thus, became an opportunity for me to embed
inclusive design thinking in my approach through the design process.
Duration: January 2020- October 2022
Product should help continue therapeutic intervention & special education sessions
Products should impart life skill training such as healthy habits & communication
Products should focus on cognitive learning and emotional intelligence
Literature Research
Understood major challenges associated with autism and ADHD
Empathise
Conducted in-depth user research
Ideation & Design
Defined some goals and facilitated the brainstorming sessions
Usability Study
Tested our prototype products with our user base
Final Design
Selected few products after revamping the designs
I assembed a team of psychologists (2), therapists (2) and a special educator. Though children with neuro-developmental disabilities were the end users, the products stakeholders included therapists, educators, and parents who became the main bridge to facilitate the sessions for children. An expanded user base made the user research more inclusive.
User Base
Children with neurodiversity (including but not limited to autism, ADHD), in the age group 7-18
Special educators and therapists like speech therapist & occupational therapist
Primary caregivers of the children (parents in most cases)
We conducted a 45-minutes, structured online interview with 5 educators and 6 parents. Psychological assessment and sensory profiling data were collected by the psychologists for 5 children. Additionally, we conducted 30-minute online observations sessions with these children, which was facilitated with the help of a primary caregiver.
Interview Guide for the Primary Caregiver
Step 1:We explained our research goal
Step 2:Questions (sample is provided below)
Pain Points
Regression in children’s progress
As COVID had already drained a lot of time, our solution needed to be easy to build, simple and easy to use by users
Lack of focus and attention
Children with autism and ADHD have deficits in attention. Thus, we sought to capture and maintain the attention of the child
Difficulty with conventional therapy sessions online
With the surge in usage of online educational platforms, our products needed simple instructions for easy implementation
Increased anxiety in children
Children faced drastic increase in anxiety due to the lost sessions. Our solutions needed to be more interactive and collaborative to keep them engaged and reduce boredom
We began by assessing the collected data from user interviews. We created affinity diagram to understand the users better and finally developed 2 personas, one parent and one therapist.
Product Opportunity
Sakshi is a special educator at Brainpreneurs Child Development Center who needs a way to provide occupational therapy and special education to her students online because covid had disrupted the normal therapeutic sessions.
Goals
Frustrations
Name: Sakshi Sharma
| Age: | 38 years |
| Sex: | Female |
| Education | Graduate |
| Hometown: | Jammu, India |
| Family: | Husband, 2 children |
| Occupation: | Occupational Therapist |
“Children have regresses back 8-10 months of training due to lockdown. It breaks my heart to see all the hard work go down like that.”
Sakshi hails from Jammu, India. She works as a full-time therapist and recently has completed her special education training. She is well experienced in her field and passionate about brining a change in the lives of children with special needs. Covid has disrupted her life, where most of her children have shown regression. It is very difficult for her to conduct online therapy. Children are unable to focus on screen and it is difficult to train parent the conventional activities and methods.
User Persona 1: Therapist
Product Opportunity
Renu is a parent of a 14 year old teenager with autism and ADHD who needs a way to provide fine-motor skills training, behaviour modification and special education at home for her child because covid has disrupted the normal therapeutic sessions.
Goals
Frustrations
Name: Renu Singh Sharma
| Age: | 48 years |
| Sex: | Female |
| Education | MBA |
| Hometown: | Bengaluru, India |
| Family: | Husband, 2 Sons |
| Occupation: | VP in an MNC |
“Disruption in my son’s sessions have been hard for him. I don't know how to manage so many things at teh same time”
Renu is a 48 years old working professional with a busy schedule. She is a mother of 2 boys (older diagnosed with autism & ADHD). Her work keeps most of her day occupied with only late evenings to spend with the children. Lockdown though gave her immense family time, but dealing with her sons condition has been hard on her. he has developed high anxiety, frequent meltdowns and behavioural issues. His teenage also poses som extra challenges which are hard to deal without professional intervention.
User Persona 2: Parent
My Role: Facilitator
Step 1:
Step 2:
“Our products will help the therapists and parents implement therapeutic sessions online during lockdown. It will affect the progress of children with special needs whose therapy faced disruption because of lockdown by providing innovative ways to continue therapy sessions and achieve the therapeutic goals.”
We measured the effectiveness by:
To address the pain points, we created some Digital Booklets (for behaviour modification) and interactive games (focused on occupational therapy) for children. We used a conversation format for Digital Booklets to replicate real-life methods of teaching. We included popular characters among children to make the learning process and its content interesting. To finalise characters, we conducted a user survey with 5 therapists and 5 parents to unveil the likeliness and familiarity of children with the selected characters like butterflies, comics characters, non-living things, etc. We also observed child’s reactions while showing them various character images.
Examples of characters/objects used for the User Survey
Character Selection: Result
User Survey Sample Questions:
Therapists suggested not to use emoticons as they can be anxiety evoking for some children. Based on results, we decided to use Marvel and DC Comic figures
Character
Marvel/ DC Characters
Butterfly
Emoticons
Likeness
9/10
7/10
6/10
Familiarity
7/10
4/10
2/10
Examples of selected characters for the Digital Booklet
For the Interactive Games, our main challenge was to develop easy-to-understand games as complex instructions were difficult to follow for most children. Additionally, our therapists had to train the guardians (who were sometimes not well-educated) to implement several sessions and maintain the consistency. Therefore, we developed interactive, attractive and simple games like ‘3D Maze’, ‘Follow the colours’, ‘Blow in the straw’, etc. Additionally, some sketches and some sample paper prototypes were also developed before making the final set of interactive games. We tested prototype and interactive activities with 7 children to understand the usability and feasibility of our ideas.
Product Sketches
Speech Therapy- Blow in the straw to maintain the ball in air
Research Questions
Participants
Methodology
Findings
Users wanted visuals to be more vibrant. Interestingly, children were also attracted by vibrant visuals in place of grey-scale or pastel colours. However, we kept the intensity of colours on the lower half.
Use of contrasting colours helps children distinguish different elements easily.
Users want use of easy, simple instructions for children to understand easily.
Based on our survey results and prototype testing, we finalized the characters, colour schemes and visuals. Consequently, we refined our paper prototypes to create some exceptional and out-of-the-box games for our end users. These included interactive games, sensory products, cognitive skill training activities, and fine-motor skills training activities. Therefore, these fine-tuned the user experience and made it more neurodiversity-affirmative, which was the main challenge that we began with. An important aspect to highlight here is that all our interactive games were hand made since COVID lockdown had disrupted the production market as well. Our final products were easy to understand and could be easily trained by the primary caretaker of the child. Hence, they proved to be suitable for the differing neurological profiles of the children involved.
Examples of Final Products (digital booklet & games)
Even though the products we made were customised to the needs of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, they can be easily used with neurotypical children as well, thus widening the accessibility and user base. We took some specific measures to ensure inclusiveness of the products. For instance, we made sure to use tactile cues in the games to make them accessible for the visually impaired. We also emphasised upon simple instruction by focusing on one or two skills each, to minimise the complexities and ensure broader implementation among children with developmental disorders. Our products, thus, respected how neurodiverse children consumed, processed, perceived and engaged with educational and therapeutic inputs.
Our results showed that just within two weeks, we observed learning improvement in 45 children by 25-30%; we saw a reduction in the anxiety of most children; the total number of successful therapy sessions increased by 40% after the implementation of our products. One major learning for me has been that when a disruption occurs in any given field, it sparks pioneering opportunities for innovations. In other words, a paradigm shift in one’s approach can contribute positively to the user experience field. I also learned that keeping our own biases aside can become an important gateway towards developing solutions. For instance, when offline methods of learning and therapy for neurodiverse children seemed challenging due to the lockdown, an important lesson learnt was that accessibility in even digital spaces should be an important concern in user experience research and design. Further, an emphasis on inclusive design thinking helped me come up with solutions that made technology more enabling for my end-users. The entire experience was all the more rewarding for me as a UX Researcher and Designer as it helped me nurture my intuitive sense of discernment and judgement as a shift from traditional methods prompted me to think deeply so that I could cater to a special population of end-users and their special needs. The consideration for accessibility and inclusiveness can lead to great ideas, applicable to everyone!
We are planning to create more innovative therapeutic games since they have shown great
results. Children attend to stimuli which helps in reducing their boredom and keeps them
more engaged in the learning process. In the future, we would like to develop more designs
specific to various conditions to cater to neurodiversity in an enhanced way.
Additionally, we are planning to implement more technological innovations using
Artificial Intelligence in therapeutic space.