Somo
A wearable, tablet, and mobile ecosystem which acts as a mediating tool for parents and children to jointly build emotional awareness and learn about the importance of expressing emotions in constructive ways.
Timeframe
10 weeks
Sept - Dec 2019
I owned
Visual, branding, synthesis and ideation lead, motion graphics, deck design
Team
Rachel DeNoble
Rui Song
Toolkit
Figma, Principle, Effects, Illustrator, FlowMapp, InDesign
Project type
For Masters in Human Computer Interaction + Design at the University of Washington
tl;dr
Somo includes a wearable for the child to use while separate from the parent to document their daily emotions, a data-centric mobile application for the parent to use away from the child, and an interactive, personalized tablet story for them to use together to talk through the feelings the child experienced throughout the day.
Throughout the research and design process my team conducted stakeholder interviews, paper prototype usability sessions, and deployed the use of a cultural probe. I led synthesis and ideation and owned the visual, branding, interaction and motion language deployed throughout.
The problem
Social anxiety is the third largest mental health disorder in the US and it affects about seven percent of the US population but is often mistaken for extreme shyness and may be left undiagnosed and untreated for years. However, when it is recognized, social anxiety is extremely treatable and children can learn several methods to cope with these symptoms with the help of their parents. By learning anxiety coping methods early in life, children will be able to carry these skills through to adulthood to have a better relationship with their emotions and anxiety as a whole.
We wanted to explore a solution to help parents and children connect on a personal level regarding feelings and emotions and give them the language and structure in order to do so.
How might we provide concerned parents with a tool to help identify social anxiety and support their child?
Our response
Child’s wearable
A wearable for the child to document their feelings in the moment when they’re away from their parent
Parent’s portal
A mobile app to help parents stay in the loop on how their child is feeling by providing contextualized information
Tale for the team
A personalized and interactive digital story for the child and parent to review the day together
Generative research
My team utilized several different methods of generative research in order to gain an overall understanding of social anxiety in children, some common coping methods, and pain points for both children and parents. This included the creation of a stakeholder map, secondary research in the form of a literature review, semi-structured interviews with both SMEs and stakeholders, and a cultural probe.
Dot-voting on what coping methods are most helpful
Dot-voting on what triggers a child’s social anxiety
Blank pieces of paper provided for parents to describe other challenges with their child’s anxiety
Stakeholder map
We begun by creating a stakeholder map in order to get a visual representation of the landscape surrounding childhood anxiety. After doing so, we chose to focus solely on the parent/child relationship. Parents are the primary stakeholder in initially recognizing their child’s potential social anxiety and have the most invested interest in helping their child to learn how to better handle it.
Literature review
In order to gain an understanding of the problem space, we conducted a literature review on Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) in children. Through this we learned methods for coping with anxiety which are recommended by child psychologists, common triggers for social anxiety in children, and an overarching view of the landscape of social anxiety.
Semi-structured interviews
The team conducted several subject matter expert and stakeholder interviews throughout our design process with a child psychologist, the program director of UW Children’s Center and two parents.
From our conversations with the program director of the UW Children’s Center, we learned about the age of reason. This is a cognitive developmental phase when children begin to have rational thought and process emotions. It generally happens between the ages of 6 to 8 which is also around the time social anxiety develops in children. We felt this would be an excellent age range to focus in on for our child users.
Cultural probe
We wanted to gain a more holistic understanding of some tools and methods parents are already employing to help their children cope with symptoms of social anxiety while also reaching them in a way that was unobtrusive and with a low level of time commitment. In order to do this, we created a cultural probe that employed the use of dot-voting.
Originally, we tried to place the probes at several clinics around Seattle, but quickly learned we needed to have IRB approvals and didn’t have the time to acquire them. Pivoting, and with the help of our network, we placed the probes at the UW Children’s Center in order to reach parents. We worked with the UW Children’s Center admins to place the probes in an appropriate location, and notify the parents about our study.
The probes helped validate some secondary research surrounding triggers and uncovered that talking through scenarios was the most commonly used method parents used to help their children learn to cope with their anxiety. We wanted to incorporate this finding into our final design response.
Research insights
Parents and children need a better way to connect
Parents often forget what it was like to be a child. It’s not always easy for them to put themselves in their child’s shoes to best understand what they may be going through. Conversely, children have never been parents and therefore also find connection with them to be a struggle at times.
Talking through scenarios is effective
We found this insight across all of our different methods of research including secondary research, cultural probes, and semi-structured interviews. Talking through these scenarios also helps parents gain context for the emotion that was being felt at the time.
Frequency and intensity as diagnostic tools
Frequency and intensity are metrics used by child psychologists in order to determine the severity of the anxiety and what steps should be taken in order to help the child best cope.
Personification as a tool
Psychologists aid children in creating characters for each of their emotions that they may be struggling with. This tool can help children realize their emotions don’t define them and that they have control over those emotions rather than their emotions controlling them.
Anxiety manifests in many forms
In some children, anxiety can look like extreme shyness, while in others, it can manifest as a stomach ache.
Parents lack context for emotional responses
Parents are not always with their child throughout the day. When a child tells a parent they had a “bad day,” they could really mean the last hour of their day was bad but the rest of the day was good. This lack of context for their child’s feelings often leaves parents feeling confused and unable to response appropriately.
Design principles
1
Equip parents
The response should help kids learn about and communicate their feelings
2
Empower children
The response should help parents understand what social anxiety looks like, how their actions contribute to it, and when to seek professional help
3
Playful but informative
The response should feel both lightweight and approachable, while also helpful and practical
4
Does not replace therapy
The response should focus on prevention and early-intervention of anxiety
Ideation and downselection
In order to make sure we weren’t influencing each other during the initial concept phase, each member of our group generated 30+ individual ideas which responded to our design challenge. When we came together we affinity mapped these 90+ ideas into 13 different categories.
Our design principles were carefully created directly from our research findings and I wanted to make sure they were utilized in our downselection process. In order to do this, I developed a method in which we assigned each of our four principles a different colored dot. Each of us took 12 dots, 3 of each color, and placed them on the ideas we felt most succinctly represented the correlated design principle.
Once all dots had been placed, we found the four ideas which had three different colored dots placed on it. This meant we felt we had four ideas which represented 3/4 of our design principles. These four ideas were used as a jumping off point to start a down selection conversation.
I then had us pull in other concepts which had dots of the missing color to combine with the ideas which already had three dots. This would allow us to create ideas which formed a more holistic idea that encompassed all four of our design principles rather than just a few. These ideas were then affinity mapped into 8 categories: AR Scenarios, In-Person Scenarios, Parent Training, Creative Expression and Analysis, Coping, Tracking, Facilitated Discussion, and Trusted Objects.
Using these categories, I lead another discussion about which of these categories was most exciting and promising to us. From this discussion emerged the following three candidates for our final design response.
A VUI which guides parents to reframe their language while speaking to their children
A trusted toy or object which the child is encouraged to speak to about their feelings
A wearable paired with a personalized, interactive iPad story
We then went through several rounds of critiques with our peers to get outside perspectives on what was feasible and exciting. Our group was still feeling very undecided so I created a group exercise in which we ranked how well each of these three ideas fit within each design principles.
In the end, there was nothing left to do besides put a stake in the ground and pick an idea. We ended up selecting the wearable and interactive story concept because it fit best with our research findings regarding feelings personification, role playing/talking through scenarios, would work within our target demographic of ages 6-8, and brought in both the child and parent as key stakeholders.
Storyboarding
Since our solution had three different pieces and could become confusing to someone not close with our project, we created a storyboard as an internal and external alignment tool. This helped us better communicate the situational contexts for each piece of our design and the user journey with our design throughout a single day.
Key path whiteboarding
We felt it was important to quickly get our visions of what each part of this solution looked like. We felt the quickest way to do this was to spend a day white boarding several different key flows which we would eventually build out into high fidelity mock-ups.
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
In order to rapidly test our concept, we used paper prototypes. Creating a high-fidelity mock up for a wearable, a mobile and a tablet application wasn’t feasible and wouldn’t have given our group the feedback needed at this stage of the design process.
Our prototype participants included: one child (age 6), two parents, and six adult proxy participants (ages 22-26) who reported experiencing social anxiety as a child. Throughout the entire test, we asked participants to think aloud through their thought process of using each piece of our solution. Using the insights from these tests, we were able to made refinements to our design.
Wearable
Research Questions
What emotions are most important to be featured on the wearable?
How many emotions should be on the wearable?
What shape is preferred between a circle, square, and inline?
Protocol
We first asked participants to describe the emotion they associated with each face that was displayed on the wearable. After that, we asked participants to use the prototype to log the following five feelings: worried, happy, sad, frustrated, upset, nervous.
Insight
Overall, our participants preferred simplicity in the wearable. People preferred the streamlined shape and could easily identify the three emotions, happy, worried, and angry, on it. Once more emotions were in the mix, people had a harder time differentiating between them in order to quickly log a feeling.
Mobile
Research Questions
Do parents understand that the data comes from the child logging feelings on the wearable?
Do they understand that the inputs are synced to the child's schedule?
Do they find it useful to see the input data in a list format showing chronological order and a graph format showing trends?
Protocol
We showed participants their child’s daily summary screen and asked them to think aloud and describe what they're seeing on the screen. We then asked them how they would view more specific information on their child. Once they found the trends tab, we asked them to describe what the child felt that day and what information they would want to discuss with the child.
Insight
Participants understood that the data was populated using the inputs from the child’s wearable. However, they wanted more guidance on what feelings they should be paying attention to.
Tablet
Research Questions
Do parents and kids make the connections between feelings logged on the wearable with the feelings characters?
Can they make the connection between feelings logged and story chapters?
Do the characters, stories, and activities help facilitate the conversation between parents and their kids?
Protocol
We had participants look at the tablet prototype and asked them to think aloud and describe what they're seeing on the screen. They were first tasked to select chapters they wanted to discuss with their child and then go through the story flow. Afterwards, we asked for general thoughts and feedback on the story, prompts, and questions and how they think the conversation with their child would go.
Insight
Participants reported really liking the story format in tablet form. However, they wanted more guidance at the beginning of the story to reduce the burden to have to choose chapters themselves. They also wanted an additional screen showing takeaways at the end so their child would have a summary of action items.
Final Design Features
Child’s wearable
The feeling tracker is a child’s wearable to be used to log feelings in the moment while they’re away from their parent.
Customizable feelings
Since anxiety manifests itself differently in every child, each of the emotions on the wearable are customizable. This way, the decision of what to track is left in the hands of the parent. We chose the emotions nervous, happy, and angry as an out-of-the-box option as those were the most easily identified feelings from our low-fidelity prototypes.
Heart rate monitoring
The wearable also includes heart rate tracking to monitor the intensity of the feeling in the moment as well as cross check the manually logged emotions inputted from the child.
Haptic feedback
Using the heart rate monitoring, the wearable will also provide haptic feedback to the child when it detects an elevated heart rate in order to prompt the child to log how they’re feeling in the moment.
Button input limits
Straight from our low-fidelity testing, inputs limits on the buttons can be set in order to avoid button mashing and a flood of data to the parent’s mobile application. For example, it could be set to only record one input every five minutes.
Parent’s portal
The Somo Mobile app is the parent’s portal into how their child is feeling when they’re not together.
Syncs feelings with child’s schedule
When the child inputs feelings on their wearable, those logged feelings automatically sync with the child’s schedule. This way, parents are able to see feelings within the context of a certain class or activity to gain a greater understanding of their child’s anxiety triggers.
Recommends outlying emotions
Somo recognizes child’s outlying emotions and automatically adds them to the “Story Feelings” list, to help parents identify what moments in time might be good to discuss. However, parent can also filter by other options they may want to discuss, such as highlights or pain points from the day using the drop down menu. Parents are also able to drag the feelings inputs in order to customize what they want to discuss and in what order.
Levels of information
The home screen shows how the child has been feeling throughout the day in a simple summary chart so a parent can easily find out how their child is doing without needing to decipher the data on their own.
If the parent does want a more in-depth understanding of their child’s emotions throughout the day, they can find this in the details tab. This displays a graph of the child’s heart rate within the context of their class schedule and the feelings they input. Here, they’re able to see when their child’s heart rate was most elevated in order to help them determine the intensity of their feelings.
Tale for the team
The Somo Tablet application is for both the parent and child to use together at the end of the day and provides a platform for constructive conversations surrounding the feelings inputs from the day.
Inputs become story
Once the parents have selected the feelings they want to discuss on their mobile application, those selected feelings become chapters in a story of their child’s day. For added flexibility and to encourage parents and children to work together, the selected feelings can also be edited together on the tablet.
This experience brings the family together and gives parents and children a new way and positive way to discuss feelings together.
Feelings become characters
Each emotion on the child’s wearable is paired with an externalization of that feeling such as nervous narwhale or happy hippo. Externalizing and personifying feelings is a tool utilized by child psychologists in order to help children understand their emotions are not in control of them.
Key takeaways
The daily story concludes with key takeaways and suggestions for child to keep in mind for the days ahead.
Narrative prompts and activities
Narrative prompts are designed to help tell a story about the child’s day and to build a productive conversation about the day since talking through scenarios is proven to be effective. Interactive prompts, such as this one, encourage children to discuss what was happening at the time the feeling was logged. The activities can be customized in order to give the child an activity which works most effectively for them.
Intensity scale
In order to help aid parents in understanding the scale of the anxiety, there is a prompt which asks the child to report on how strong the feeling is in order to track the intensity of their feelings over time.
Coping mechanisms
There is also a prompt to help teach children coping skills for the future so they are able to develop a relationship with their emotions and further understand ways to manage these feelings.
Branding & visual systems
The look and feel of Somo was owned by me. I wanted to make this product feel as polished as possible and therefore no visual design decision was made without careful consideration.
Somo is a portmanteau of the words “social” and “emotion”. I created the logo to be bubbly, chunky, and friendly with the accents representing the classic iconography of a smile and a frown.
The color scheme I developed in order to be gender neutral, friendly, and approachable to further create a feeling of trustworthiness and ease about using this product for sensitive information. The colors were also chosen with the mindset that they would need be used for both an application directed at children as well as one directed at adults.
I art directed Somo’s illustration style to be geometric and flat in design in order to communicate a handcrafted look to perpetuate the approachability of these characters. They are intentionally colored in expected ways rather than, for example, angry being represented by the color red in order to communicate the idea that emotions look and feel different for every child.
I chose Poppins as our main story text to create a fun, lighthearted reading experience for the child and parent together. I used Open Sans for the general UI to not detract from the data being presented in the parents mobile application as well as ensure our UI was legible and clean.
Motion language
When animating our characters, I wanted to convey the emotion they represented simply but succinctly. The emotion needed to be recognizable immediately by children when going through their story at the end of the day. I used minimal but “standard” emotive animations. Angry Alligator’s nostrils flare and their eyebrows furrow. Nervous Narwhal’s tail shifts anxiously while their arms move inward, shyly. Happy Hippo’s ears twitch with excitement and they throw their arms upward joyfully.
Design documentation
We utilized several different methods of documentation while we fleshed out the visual systems as well as the user experience. Each of these pieces allowed our group to create a more fully realized design response that didn’t leave anything overlooked.
Moodboards
Our group created several different moodboards to align internally on visual style for UI, illustrations, and the wearable
Information architecture
Information architecture diagrams were created in order for our group to conceptualize the full user flow and user experience for key paths including onboarding, tracking feelings on the wearable, viewing feelings data on the mobile app, and walking through the daily story on the tablet.
Conceptual models
We used conceptual models to break down each component of our design to see how they interact with one another and to keep our design systems consistent.
Interaction flows with annotations
If we were to ship this product, we wanted our interaction intentions clear to engineering teams who would be in charge of fully building this out. Interaction flows and annotations ensure that our ideas are clearly articulated for a full hand off.
Redlines
Redlines were created in order to ensure consistency across screens and components should this product ship.
Next steps
High-fidelity usability testing
Since this project ended with creating our high fidelity prototype, I’d want to do further usability testing with our new prototypes to validate our design decisions. This would include a prolonged study with the wearable to validate our assumptions that children will be able to log their feelings in real time.
Flesh out customization features
Customization is a necessity in our product because anxiety can look so different in each child. I would want to really flesh out the flow of how parents and children choose which feelings they want to keep track of and how they could set personal goals to reach.
Expand story content and activities
We want this to be something both the child and parent look forward to doing together at the end of the day. Because of this, I’d want to partner with a child psychologist in order to come up with more prompts, activities, and coping strategies to keep this experience fun, engaging, and useful.
Interview potential stakeholders
There are many key stakeholders involved in the raising of a child outside of parents. Teachers, nannies, and after school program advisors would all be interesting people to get perspectives on how this product could potentially be integrated into their programs.
Data visualization testing
There’s a lot of data included in this application and visualizing it properly and cohesively could have been an entire ten week long project in itself. I’d want to explore and test other methods of data visualization and expand out our Parents Portal to show different trends of emotions over time.
Lifecycle exploration
I’d want to do some testing around the lifecycle of this product. One idea that was discussed with the team were a rental program so parents didn’t need to spend money on a wearable that they would potentially only be using for a short amount of time. This also would include looking at different methods of delivering the interactive story besides on an iPad as this is not a product most homes have access to.
Reflections
Somo was the very first project I worked on in MHCI+D and one that I’m really proud of. My teammates and I all trusted and respected one another and each of us was able to feel ownership over different aspects of this project.
We had so many questions at the start of this. All of us were going through a career transition, returning to school after being in industry for years, and learning new processes and tools daily.
But working through all of those questions taught me to get things out of my own head as fast as possible in order to bounce them off of others. We spent a lot of hours talking and sketching jumbled bits of this experience out with one another. My previous job experiences had me working in silos quite often and being in a constant feedback loop with two other people was both challenging and highly rewarding for me.
For me in particular, I had never had to work with participants before. We had such a limited amount of time to reach a very protected user group and that presented a lot of challenges. Children, especially those who have parents concerned with their social behaviors, are a protected group that are largely difficult to reach, I had never heard of an IRB before and I had to get over a huge mental hurdle that asking people to participate in research would be an inconvenience to them.
In the end though, all of that work paid off! Somo was voted the best project out of fourteen by our peers, our advisors, and guests of a final showcase.
