Pickchat - the real-time messenger that uses a drawing as a primary communication tool, made for people with communication difficulties, allowing them to have fun and express their feelings and thoughts easily and creatively.
PICHAT
What
Native Mobile App (IOS)
Why
Study Project (Interactive Design Cours, Shenkar)
Who
Team of Two Designers
Role
Designer, Researcher, Illustrator
Category
Communication
When
Nov-2021
Why do we create this project?
I'm a big believer in creating a society without disabilities. This app was created to allow people to have non-verbal communication, have fun, and be heard. The messenger was adapted to use by people with communication disorders.
Results
There is a growing need for convenient, easy-to-use, and affordable communication tools for people with communication disabilities.
The Claim
The new ‘normal’ defined during the COVID-19 pandemic has forced us to re-assess how people with special needs thrive in these unprecedented conditions, such as those with communication disabilities. These challenging conditions have instigated me to revisit the usage of digital communication services.
The Problem
The number of people with all kinds of communication disabilities is growing. However, many people in both Majority and Minority World countries receive limited or no support in relation to their communication disabilities.
Market Research:
15%
of people experiencing some
form of communication disability
(~one billion people).
4%
people with significant
communication disorders
worldwide.
17%
experiences some form
of communication disability
in Israel.
65%
experiences some form
of some form of dyslexia
in Israel.
Flow Diagram
I have created a basic flowchart illustrating the main actions that users can take to cover all the required functionality. Although there are additional fail states flows that have been created, they are not shown below due to space constraints.
Design Process:
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Card Talk
4.6 star
1.54K reviews
100K+ downloads
Leeloo
3.8 star
584 reviews
100K+ downloads
JABtalk
4.0 star
368 reviews
100K+ downloads
The Good
All apps were developed with the AAC (Augmentative and Alternative Communication) and PECS (Picture Exchange Communication System) principles; All apps have no onboarding, which simplifies their use of it; Card Talk and JABtalk have a simple and playful interface, and there are options for personalization by adding personal images; Card Talk and Leeloo have a clean design and use simple forms and colors.
The Bad
All apps are made to provide a single or related feature based on picture exchange communication to very specific In, most nonverbal users; People often point out poor customization instruments and that customization takes a lot of time; Leeloo has a complicated interface, as users say; All apps look very basic in terms of features, for example, there is no way to have a complex compensation.
Competitive Analysis:
Alignment and grid
For this particular project, I opted for an 8-pixel grid and established margins of 8 and 16 for individual elements, with margins of 16, 24, 32, and 48 between groups.
Samuel Stuart
Card Talk app user
You can't make/edit decks, use more than three cards at a time, or customize anything other than cards. Cause of this, it feels significantly limiting and restricting (especially as someone with a lot to say).
Payton Hillman
Leloo app user
I dislike that it's so gendered. The avatars are almost all white or pale, vibration is enabled by default, and there's no way to turn off all notifications in app settings.
Riley Jones
JABtalk app user
I loved how you can customize the pictures, my son has to see the real picture to understand it. But how can I make them bigger? He has a hard time seeing and the pictures are really small.
Problems From The Comments:
Make it yours by choosing the illustration style and by using endless illustration lybroary to express everything you whant.
Create together in real-time mode. Draw, colorize, build compositions, and play with thousands of particles pre-made by illustrators and recognized by an intelligent system that makes complicated things simple and ready to use until you are happy with the result.
Connect with people in real-time, express yourself, and create together - Pichat allows you to do it.
A new real-time messenger that gives people with any communication disorder way to increase social interactions have fun, and express themselves throw drawing simply and creatively.
At the end of the session, you can see how your friend continues drawing or add a voice message if you feel so.
Color Palette
Accent, primary, secondary, tertiary, background
Font
Gotham:
regular, medium, bold
Playful look and feel
We created illustrations to achieve the desired style
High Fidelity UI:
After finalizing the initial flow, my next step was to design a few of the key screens for the app. To begin with, I focused on establishing the typography and color palette.
Concept Strategy
Based on the data collected from research, our goal was to create a communication instrument that is easy to customize, fun to use, and motivates to be creative. During the analysis, we identified features in designing support and making hypotheses based on current AI features for progress tracking, personalized content delivery, and image recognition.
As a part of the conceptualization prosses, we worked with the Disruptive model, which allowed us to upgrade the basic features of the classic messengers. The main decision was a refusal to use the text as a primary communication tool. Instead of it, we decided to go for drawing as the most straightforward and oldest communication available for everyone.
Solution:
