BRIEF

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Tool

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App Design

Emoji Chat

People with Autism who haven't had Facial Expression Training have difficulties recognizing emojis, hence there is a need for an App that helps them interpret the meaning of emojis better.

EmojiChat is an app that focuses on teaching and assisting emoji usage for people with Autism. The goal of this app is to help people with autism understand and interpret the meaning of emojis in conversation.

This project was very important to me because I really wanted to help people who are sufferers of autism to fit in socially, through reducing awkward blunders in textual conversations.

DURATION

4 Weeks

Role

Designer

Processes

What is Autism

Autism is a life long developmental disability that affects how we communicate with and relate to others. It affects how we make sense of the world around us. Lots of things that people take for granted like body language and metaphors can be confusing and alienating for people with Autism.

Some of the people with autism have fewer problems with speech but may still have difficulties with understanding and processing language. Other people with autism have trouble with reading facial expressions and understanding jokes, sarcasm or emojis.
In 2018 the CDC determined that approximately 1 in 59 children is diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Most of the symptoms can be reliably diagnosed as early as age 2 but many children were still being diagnosed after age 4. The cause of autism is unknown, and there is no cure. However, children with ASD benefit from early educational intervention – the earlier, the better.

If the symptoms are caught earlier in the child’s life, they can be visibly reduced with therapy,
These early symptoms of Autism has been found in children. Poor eye contact leads to lack of recognizing facial expressions, which will result in a lack of social skills.

Interview

In order to further understand how much emojis affect autistic people, I reached out to people who have worked with autistic people, or people who suffer from autism, via email and Quora.
Based on interviews, most people with Autism who have had Facial Expression Training can understand emojis just fine.

Individuals who have trouble recognizing facial expressions, find it difficult to recognize emojis; especially when others use a bunch of emojis together in different ways.
How might we ease the learning curve of emojis for people with Autism to help them embrace and understand online conversation?

solution

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