SSA is a revolutionary application that allows the user-therapist, using a PC, Tablet or mobile phone, to transform a social story or a comic strip into animation quickly. The user can present it, instantaneously, to the person they are treating for a targeted therapeutic reason.
My role
- Lead Designer
- Establishing UX/UI Design Guidelines
- Gathering valuable data from Institutes
- Character creations
- Animations creation
- Team supervision
The team
- CEO & Management
- Frontend & Backend Developers
- Product Management
- Ekkinisi Institute
- Therapeutics
- Animation Team
Deliverables
- Therapeutics Interviews
- Workshop preparations
- User Flow Optimisation
- Mock-ups
- Prototypes
- Animation Library creation
Establishing UX/UI Guidelines
After making a Competitors Analysis, we have quickly realised that there is no real competitor on the market and that we are pioneering with the project. However, this gave us great excitement after realising the opportunities we were facing. We have contacted the leading institutes dealing with people with Autism and with people who are suffering from Intellectual disorders with the hope they will recognize and support our effort in building an App which could help them. After our first meetings, we gained their support and the collection of all the valuable data about the User needs, started. One of the main supporters was Autism Europe.
Conclusion
We have decided as a result of our findings to create an animation-based app. We created libraries of small animations that would allow therapists who deal with people with autism to create different everyday situations which would enable their patients to understand how to accomplish them.
Character Creation
The best way to illustrate all the daily situations was to build characters with whom the Users could emphasise and learn. We have decided to make a Family as the best solution. The creation started from simple sketches throughout different iterations, which led us to the final designs.
First sketches
Final Illustrations
Adding Emotions
Left: First iteration, Right: Final Illustration
Application first sketches and later iterations
There were loads of iterations in the process, so I will include only few
First sketches
First Designs
Adding a patient and creating a scene with the first prototype
Video examples of creating some animations inside the first app prototype
Create your environment inside the scene
Adding characters to the chosen scene
Basic interactions among characters
Interactions between characters and with the environment
Testing and further development
The first functional prototype of the app was tested in several Institutes which deal with people with Autism, for example, Ekkinisi Center in Athens, Greece. All the results were gathered with the help of the therapeutics and were based on real work with people with Autism. The findings were examined and articulated for further iterations. It has been approved by leading organisations like Autism Europa and awarded for innovation. The App was a big success, and we were pioneering in creating such.
Reviews of therapeutics
Wonderful
With its interactive nature, intense colours and emphasis given on optical stimulus, the SSA provides strong motivation for children and adolescents on the autism spectrum.
Friendly to the user, quick and flexible, it allows the therapist to work towards multiple goals and simultaneously document and control the results of his/her intervention. With this application, the therapist can work towards the comprehension and execution of instructions, social and communicative skills, the identification, and management of emotions, empathy, independence, etc, that apply to any context, home, school, therapy, or community. So far, The results are wonderful, and it seems that SSA will be useful for every therapist.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
— Hristina (Therapeutic)
“Social Skills animation” is the materialization of an idea that emerged after many years of therapeutic experience as an Occupational Therapist working with children, adolescents, and adults with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder)
Clinical experience has demonstrated that the utilization of an optical system can expedite the learning process, thereby enhancing its relevance to the individual and resulting in expedited outcomes. I started using the optical system in my sessions to help my clients reach their therapeutic goals because I saw them make progress.
After attending educational programs with an emphasis on Social Stories, comic strips and Video Modelling, an idea emerged to encapsulate, simply and quickly, all these practices in animation. Animation provides a way to implement these practices, more appealingly and effectively, to the ones we treat.
As the coordinator of the outpatient clinical centre “Ekkinisi” and with the help of the multidisciplinary team (psychologist, speech therapists, occupational therapists, special educators, and child psychiatrists), this idea came to life. After three years of the team’s cooperation with computer programmers, cartoonists and animators, an interactive- ready to use- application “Social Skills Animation” was completed. “Social Skills Animation” is now available for all the popular operating systems (Windows, Mac, Android) with only a few system requirements.
This revolutionary application allows the user-therapist, with the use of a PC, Tablet or mobile phone, to transform quickly a social story or a comic strip into animation. The animation is presented, instantaneously, to the person they are treating for a targeted therapeutic reason.
— Aleksandar (CEO)
