Problem
Overcoming Language Challenges is Difficult for Hard-of-Hearing Kids

Children who are deaf or hard-of-hearing continue to demonstrate a poor developmental profile with markedly low language ability relative to their cognitive potential and peers. They may struggle in social settings, have fewer friends, and have difficulty expressing wants and needs.

Technology Assisted Language Intervention (TALI) demonstrates that augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technology provides visual supports for linguistic concepts. Voice output serves as a mode of feedback for verbal expression, which are beneficial characteristics for a child who misses out on key aspects of language due to hearing loss.

Solution
Encourage Family Members to be Active Partners in the Intervention

The deliverables will be two educational YouTube videos tackling important language goals and a family guide booklet with activity worksheets and goal-setting to keep track of weekly progress.

The materials are to be used with families across settings, with the goal of supporting families to be central and active partners implementing the intervention across environments, especially at home. Speech therapy sessions alone aren’t enough to develop language skills, so it's particularly vital that the families have the resources to carry on the intervention more independently.

The Live Well Team

• Bain Butcher | University of Cincinnati MD Faculty Lead

• Hannah Martin | Team Lead and Communication Design Co-Op

• Rachel Fagan | Industrial Design Co-Op

• Cindy Zhang | Communication Design Co-Op

My Responsibilities

• Aiding in secondary and primary research, including benchmarking online resources and character styles

• Creating interview guides, interviewing clinicians and patients, and synthesizing insights to create video topics

• Making graphic assets and visuals for the animated video "Encouraging Your Child to Communicate Using Language"

Literature Review and Benchmarking

We looked at AAC materials, their usage in classroom and home settings, and why they are a crucial component in overcoming the effects of hearing loss. Afterwards, we benchmarked various healthcare educational resources to get an idea on how to design for the TALI print materials. We also benchmarked educational videos for inspiration for when we design the videos.

Patient and Clinicians Interview

To understand patient educational needs and pain points, we interviewed two speech pathologists and a family patient whose child is hard-of-hearing to gain important insights on how the TALI device and intervention are used and how the it helped.

Print Material Mind Map and Video Topic Planning

We took our findings from our interviews and meet-ups with the CCHMC speech pathologists to devise a mind map of how we want to frame the content for the print guide and videos. Tracking skill development and engagement were the most crucial topics of TALI, and we landed on modeling complex language for the videos, which would target the aforementioned topics.

TALI Usage Survey and Personas and Scenario Role-play

To gain and understanding of how the TALI study is currently used, we surveyed 13 families, looking into their demographics and how often their child used the TALI device. We then created persona groups based off of our interview and survey insights to visualize the different types of patients and to understand their experiences and relationships with TALI. Additionally, we created our own empathy scenarios and role-played as a clinician and a patient and parent. We needed to consider how the TALI materials will fit a variety of families.

Print Materials and Video Topics Planning

After our interviews and persona creation, the team moved onto creating the content for the analog materials as well as scenarios and specific language goals for the videos. The speech pathologists wished to see topics such as repairing and fixing language and grammar mistakes and encouraging children to speak using language as the main subjects.

Character and Storyboard Sketches For Videos

Hannah and I benchmarked simple, visually-appealing character designs, styles, and colors that we could reference from for sketching. We sketched out characters to look vibrant, family-friendly, and easy-to-understand. We also sketched out storyboard scenarios, covering important language goal topics. For the print analog materials, Rachel sketched out several worksheet examples and devices, with the binder being the most versatile and portable.

Final Storyboards

This scenario follows Sylvester and his father as they venture into the aquarium, helping Sylvester verbalize more as he is content and relaxed in his favorite environment. All storyboards are created by me.

Digital Assets and Style Guide

Family Guide

The family guide includes general information on what TALI is, goal-setting worksheets, and progress tracking to engage families with their hard-of-hearing child, with examples of scenarios of using TALI to help a hard-of-hearing child handle issues that come on with hearing loss. The materials are in a binder for easy portability and convenience for families.

Video: Encouraging Your Child To Communicate Using Language

The first video follows Sylvester as he ventures to the aquarium, his happy place, with his father to expand his vocabulary and motivate himself to verbalize more with language using the TALI device.

Video: Self-Monitoring and Repairing Mistakes

The second video follows Julie going to her grandmother’s house to spend a day in the garden and work on recognizing and correcting her language mistakes due to her hearing loss. She practices fixing her language mistakes with reminders to use her TALI device to continue fixing those mistakes.

Takeaways

• The two videos are currently on Cincinnati Children’s YouTube for family and patient reference, and the guide book is used in family appointments.

• This project taught me that collaboration between cross-functional teams is key in a project’s success. I really enjoyed getting to work with UX research fellows and other designers. I got to learn a lot on how their specialties contributed to the final deliverables.

• I got to experience first-hand on how the user-centered design process works. I learned how to conduct design research, lead stakeholder interviews, synthesize research insights, and design the final product for client hand-off.

• I really enjoyed applying my illustration skills to the storyboards and the character design. It’s not often that I get to employ my favorite hobby at work!