Challenge

Around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and 34 million of these are children. They are more likely to have poor mental health and suffer from depression and anxiety. According to National Deaf Children’s Society 78% of deaf children attend mainstream schools, where other children don’t know sign language, which makes interactions much more difficult.

Solution

Around 466 million people worldwide have disabling hearing loss, and 34 million of these are children. They are more likely to have poor mental health and suffer from depression and anxiety. According to National Deaf Children’s Society 78% of deaf children attend mainstream schools, where other children don’t know sign language, which makes interactions much more difficult.

Brand

My brand's aim is to show how fun it can be to communicate despite the differences. Bring the joy we feel while connecting with other people and creating new relationships to children who need it the most. My brand believes and wants to represent a world where everyone is different but still fit in perfectly.

Mobile App

The target audience are children, therefore I made it colourful and exiting, keeping in mind the original purpose; encourage communication and bonding with disabled children. Simple interface, with shallow learning curve ensure children will not get frustrated. The exiting colours and avatar will encourage interaction with the app.

Avatar

The main focus of the app would be the avatar; a cartoon character, that children can interact with and use as communication tool. The connotation of the avatar with the TV would help associate the app with fun, play time rather than difficult problem solving. Further development of the app would include customisation of the avatar; this way children could further identify it.

User Journey

My biggest priority of the user journey was to limit the steps the user must go through to minimum. In translation it is important that the tool itself does not get in the way and doesn’t interrupt the conversation too much. Therefore, I tried to contain the translation process to 3/4 steps and thanks to simple interface design and standard navigation elements, already known to the user, I ensure that the actions are fast and without any unnecessary distractions. The extra settings and features are contained in menus available when needed.

Other Features

Since my users are still young and don’t know or are in the process of learning the sign language I decided to include the basic educational games and an ability to save the translated text into phrasebook which hopefully will help children with their studies.

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Translation