SymbolStory

2023 – present
Project Overview
SymbolStory is an innovative web app designed for child therapists to easily create Social Stories—a clinically proven method to help children with learning difficulties, such as autism. The app enables the creation of fully customizable stories tailored to each child’s needs in just minutes, a feat made possible through the integration of AI, overcoming limitations of previous methods.
My role
Product Designer
User Research, Prototyping & Testing, UI Design, Design system, Web Design

My story at SymbolStory

I joined this volunteer project as the first designer and was responsible for building the design system from the ground up. In addition, I crafted an intuitive user experience to ensure that therapists could easily navigate the platform and create custom Social Stories efficiently.
Utilizing advanced technologies in an environment not typically oriented toward tech presents several challenges:

Design system

A comprehensive design system was developed with clear, easy-to-understand tokens and Figma components. Understanding the volunteer nature of the project, and the likelihood of working with multiple developers and other designers, I made sure to document all components thoroughly. This ensures seamless integration for any new team members joining the project.
SymbolStory Tokens
To ensure seamless system growth and scalability, I focused on establishing key system patterns, particularly in terms of structural hierarchy and navigation. These foundational elements were essential to create a consistent and intuitive user experience. By defining a clear organizational structure, we enabled future features and content to be easily integrated without disrupting the overall design. This approach not only supports the app’s current functionality but also allows for smooth expansion as the project evolves, ensuring long-term sustainability in both user experience and system architecture.

Prototyping the solution

After defining the structure, we shifted our focus to prototyping and implementing individual features. In parallel, we researched various AI API solutions to meet our personalization requirements. As a result, at the current stage of development, SymbolStory can generate consistent child characters and adapt to different cognitive abilities, offering a more tailored experience for each user.
Child creation flow

Design

In order to validate our ideas and solutions, I created a master prototype that included the whole onboarding process: not only the path that the business expects from the client to achieve fast acquisition, but also various aspects and features of Mayple platform to validate that they fit into the new information architecture and UI.
Mayple master prototype
Our CEO and I conducted dozens of deep user tests with our primary target audiences and explored different variations of onboarding and other aspects of the Mayple platform. Some hypotheses, such as a live chat with a bot after a brief completion, weren't successful; others, like a guided product tour, proved to be quite effective (we also saw later in Fullstory recordings from our clients that a short product tour we made had a hight completion rate). During the user test and the following usability test with Maze.design, I also made multiple small UX improvements.
Child avatar
Story generation

Clinical validation

We are currently running a pilot to validate the clinical viability of our solutions while gathering feedback on both design and functionality. Below, I would like to share one piece of feedback from a therapist:
“I’m happy to share that yesterday I shared one of the stories created by the software with the student. He asked to read it silently. In the third paragraph, the student responded out loud, ‘Wow, I can’t believe it knew how I feel.’ A conversation followed about the situation and his feelings.
Then he asked to create an avatar himself, enjoyed the interaction, and ‘invented’ a story, which turned out to reflect an experience he had three years ago at school. Thank you. I will continue in the next session as well. 🙏”

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