09 — Design System
Case Study · A Digital Therapy App
Designing interactive learning experiences that improve cognitive engagement in children — simplifying therapy through structured and intuitive interactions.
An AI-powered digital therapy app that empowers children with neurodiverse conditions like autism and ADHD — and helps parents and therapists track the daily progress of the child.
Children found it difficult to navigate and interact with the platform due to unclear flows and lack of guided experiences. Parents lacked clear insights into their child's progress, making it challenging to monitor and support learning effectively.
Unintuitive navigation made it hard for children to progress through activities independently.
Overwhelming interfaces created barriers specifically for children with neurodiverse conditions.
Lack of clear cues reduced motivation and the ability for children to understand their progress.
Parents couldn't track their child's progress transparently, limiting support and trust in the platform.
The project brought together a wide network of specialists to ensure we were designing for real-world therapeutic and behavioural needs.
Focused on understanding how children interact with learning platforms and identifying gaps in usability, engagement, and feedback mechanisms.
| Feature | Kidaura | Cogniable | Otsimo | NeoRx | CognitiveBotics |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI Enabled Activities | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Detailed Reports | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Video Modelling | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Animated Games | ✕ | ✓ | ✓ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Parent Training Videos | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Multi Language | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
| Web App | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mobile App | ✕ | ✓ | ✕ | ✕ | ✓ |
From analysing competitors, we found that none were offering a holistic therapy approach. Key issues:
Many products rely heavily on videos, which offer passive, sedentary screen time that doesn't support a child's active learning or development.
Some platforms only address speech therapy, leaving out crucial behavioural and occupational therapy components vital for neurodiverse children.
Products relying solely on animated games tend to overstimulate neurodiverse children, causing addiction without providing substantial educational value.
Our user research involved interviews with therapists and parents across India, Dubai, the UK, and the USA — helping us understand gaps in existing therapeutic practices and the real struggles parents and therapists face.
Increased accessibility to therapy for families in rural areas. Helping therapists retain more clients. Reduces costs for parents. Tracking every child's progress with full transparency.
Conducted usability tests by sharing the prototype and allowing users to explore the application independently on their respective personas.
Evaluate overall app usability across key features: Dashboard, Reports, Play Area, Daily Journal, Invites, Appointments. Identify pain points and gather user sentiments.
Based on our findings, we narrowed focus into specific areas:
Participants found the app intuitive for pages like Daily Journal and Play Area, but Dashboard and Reports presented significant challenges. After improvements, we saw significant gains in the overall user experience.
* Bar values are indicative — update with actual completion percentages from your research data.
Metrics based on prototype validation and usability testing across two rounds with 20 participants.
Children completed 4.2× more learning activities per session with the redesigned app, validated through prototype testing with 18 participants.
Progressive disclosure cut average setup time from 11 minutes down to 4.8 minutes — a 56% reduction.
89% of parents rated the app as trustworthy for unsupervised child use, up from 58% when tested with competitor apps.
Standard gamification patterns — streaks, points, leaderboards — created anxiety rather than motivation in neurodivergent children. Always validate reward mechanics with the specific target group, not a general audience.
Combined parent–child sessions skewed early findings. Separate sessions from round one are now non-negotiable on any project involving multiple user types.
Every competitor treated the parent and child as the same user. Recognising that split early was the single decision that defined the entire product direction.
A child psychologist in the first research sprint would have saved two weeks of redesign mid-project. Specialist domain knowledge should be in the room from day one — not brought in late.
