Team

Project lead

User experience designer

Illustrator

Developers

Researcher

Nepal House Society staff and board members

My role

User experience designer

DIGITAL TOOLS

Adobe Illustrator

Axure

Timeline

2014

The user problem 

Emotionally traumatised girls in Pokhara, Nepal are being forced out of school because they are unable to stay calm and focused in the classroom. 

Key question

How might we help emotionally traumatised girls in rural Pokhara stay calm and focused in the classroom? 

Success metric

The girls ability to stay calm and focused in the classroom after using the Mind-Full app.

Nepal house society

Mind-Full was originally made for the Nepal House Society, a school located in Pokhara, Nepal.

Many of the girls at the school have trouble staying calm and focusing as a result of trauma they have endured (e.g. poverty, domestic violence). This results in these girls often being kicked out of government schools leaving them unable to receive education.

The Nepal House Society provides therapy for the girls and aims to help them in transitioning back into government schools. The teachers and staff at the school wanted to teach the girls mindfulness techniques to help them stay calm and focused.

However, they found it challenging to determine if and when a child is practicing the techniques well and what kind of impact it was having on the child.

Analysis of mindfulness practices

I conducted an analysis of Mindfulness practices (e.g. yoga, meditation) by reading and summarizing a number papers in the field. These findings helped us determine that mindfulness was the correct avenue to pursue and the techniques we may want to try. 

My role

As the user experience designer on the project I was responsible for leading the interaction design of the project.

I was responsible for the following aspects of this project:

• Researching the effectiveness of mindfulness practices.

• Creating low fidelity wireframes.

• Creating interactive prototypes in Axure.

• Collaborating with the visual designer.

• Collaborating with development team through weekly meetings. 

Design challenges

Some of the challenges we faced in creating a game for emotionally traumatized girls living in a third world country included:

1. No common language: The girls didn’t speak English and some were unable to read so the game couldn’t have words or written instructions.

2. Large age range: There were 24 girls at the school ranging in age from age 3-11 years old so we had to ensure that the game worked for multiple ages. 

3. No exposure to technology: The girls were unfamiliar with technology and had never seen computers or tablets. Therefore we could not rely on known user patterns, e.g. back and next buttons, throughout the game.

Design guidelines

Based on the research and design challenges, we created a set of design guidelines to help guide the project. 

• It should be easy to learn how to use the game.

• The game should reward desired brain states (calm and focus) and communicate to the girls that they are doing something correctly.

• They game should clearly show the girl's progress in the game.

• The game should keep track of individual girl's progress so that teachers can track their progress over time.

Context inspired games

We spoke with a trauma therapist and board member of Nepal House Society to determine which games we should create.

She recommended that we look to the environment that the girls grew up in to help us inspire the games in the app.

Based on that feedback, the app consists of has 3 games based on the everyday activities that the girls would be familiar with.

1. Pinwheel: This was a common toy that the girls played with.

2. Paragliders: Paragliding is a popular tourist activity in the region and the girls often watched paragliders in the sky.

3. Rock collecting: The girls were used to seeing people go down to the river and collect rocks to sell as a means of making income.

Wireframes & prototypes

The visual designer and I created wireframes and high fidelity mockups for the games.

I was responsible for creating the wireframes and prototypes in Axure while the visual designer was responsible for creating the illustrations and UI for the games. 

Both the visual designer and I worked closely with the developers to ensure that the games would be technically feasible.

We had weekly meetings with the entire team to show design updates and discuss any technical challenges that they may have. 

Evaluations by Nepal House Society

Once we had a working version of the game developed, the project lead took the game to Nepal House Society to receive feedback from the staff working there. 

Final design

Based on the feedback received from the staff at Nepal House Society, we made a few changes to the designs before settling on a final design. 

The Mind-Full app connects to the the NeuroSky MindWave Mobile EEG headset through bluetooth. 

The headset measures a users brainwaves to determine whether a user is calm or focused, and results in progress in the game.

Each game increases in difficulty by requiring the user to remain calm and focused.

First game

Get relaxed by making the pinwheel spin.

Second game

Stay relaxed by landing a paraglider.

Third game

Focus attention by stacking rocks to build an inukshuk.

This video helps demonstrate how the games in Mind-Full work.

User testing in Nepal

A 14 week study of Mind-Full was conducted at the Nepal House Society in Nepal to see how effective the game would be.

The results showed that by using Mind-Full the girls were able to practice self-regulation by improving their ability to remain calm and focused.

The girls were then able to maintain the self-regulation skills they had learned for 2 months after the study had concluded and take that skill of self-regulation into their classrooms and onto the playground.

Creation of additional version of Mind-Full

Due to the success of Mind-Full two additional variations, Mind-Full Sky and Wild, were created to help children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorders stay calm and focused.

News article:

‘Mind-Full’ app helps traumatized children learn how to relax

Limited access to the users of the product

It was challenging to design for an audience that you don’t have easy access to. While we were able to discuss the games with staff members at Nepal House Society, it would have been great to test with the girls at the school earlier on in the process.  

Opportunity of designing for first time technology users

This project helped me realise how we often rely on assumptions about our users when designing, for example users will be familiar with what a gear icon means.

Since the audience of this project did not speak English and had no familiarity with technology we had to consider other ways of communicating the intent of each game.

Meaningful impact of design

As challenging as this project was, it’s also the most meaningful project I have worked on in my career. Mind-Full has provided a tangible impact to people who are often overlooked in society and has had a positive impact on their lives. It’s a reminder to me that technology doesn’t have to be fancy to have a positive impact on the lives of users.