How to make an app for autism
#2014asdappjam Week 2 Monday
What my mom taught me about business, developing, and making a great product.
My mom has a unique habit, whenever we go out to get something to eat, let’s say fish tacos, she says she can make it, asks me what I like, then makes fish tacos for dinner, even though we had fish tacos for lunch.
My mom is secretly a genius.
She unconsciously understands two things:
- If people like something they want more of that thing
- If you don’t know what they like or need, ask or observe
That’s it, as an awesome mom she always looks at what I’m ordering at restaurants, because that’s what I like; and honestly I don’t complain if I have fish tacos for lunch or dinner.
What does this have to do with building apps to help individuals with autism?
When we set out, we wanted to create a toy that analyzed children’s play patterns and was able to diagnose the child with ASD using sensors. There’s research that shows the use of motion sensors can help with early detection:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263927.php
Not only that, we know that children with ASD aren’t good at symbolic play, that is imaginative play where kids imagine having a tea party, or a superhero fight with an action figure. They like following the same patterns, and repetitive behavior.
That being said, after thinking about it, our tool becomes useless when a child has already been diagnosed with ASD. So we wanted the bear to evolve with the child as he grew up. At first as a non-intrusive detection tool, and then as a tool to help parents and caretakers, do what they were really meant to do, parent and care for their child. So we had to take a look at how these sensors in the Teddy Bear could be applied as kids got older and grew up. The idea to use a Teddy Bear was simply, that it’s a non-invasive toy, that the child could depend on for comfort . The parents and caretakers are the real users of our technology, they’re the ones, the hardware and software is aimed for.
So how do you help them?
Simple, ask, observe, and find out where their pain points lie. As mainly developers and engineers we’re really good at making cool stuff, but not necessarily useful things. In order to make a good app that helps people, the easiest thing to do is listen, empathize, and ask.
I would highly recommend listening to this podcast episode of, “Smart Passive Income,” to understand more about finding people’s pains points.
http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/no-ideas-no-expertise-no-money-business/
Listen to the stories
1 in 50 children are diagnosed with ASD, that’s a very large number, that means people must have the same pain points that others are experiencing. A very easy thing to do is ask people on reddit, or Quora, or any other social media site their pains with ASD, and work from there. The important thing is to listen carefully for their pains. I read someone’s story and the pain points she experienced raising a son with Autism were:
- Her son wouldn’t eat, and what he does eat is bad for him.
- She didn’t feel ok when hiring a baby sitter, because her son had special needs.
- Frequent temper tantrums and meltdowns.
- Cost of therapy
- Constant worry over her son’s future.
Once you’ve located the pain points do research on each, and find out how you can use technology or an app to alleviate them. For example, for number 2 if there was an app that connected parents with baby sitters who were trained and have experience with special need children, and who have been background checked, this would solve her problem. For number 1, autistic children do better on diets that don’t have gluten, but it can be hard to get them to eat sometimes, perhaps an educational app that postively reinforces eating correctly and healthily, a challenge for this is autistic children can have troulbe imitating their parents and peers. Number 3 is a very deep pain for parents and caretakers of children with ASD, they’re very sensitive to senses, like repetitive behavior and don’t like doing new things, so something as simple as a loud noise, or someone took their usual spot at the bus can lead to a meltdown. It’s hard enough to calm down the child, but to have people stare and gawk can be very embarassing, I’ve heard parents carry a business card that say, “My child has autism.” written on it so that onlookers know to give space and not to judge or criticize, several technologies actually address this problem I recently saw one from MIT, that analyzed background noise and gave an alert if there was a possiblity of meltdown.
The fourth one, cost of therapies is especially true, my own professor has spent half a million dollars out of pocket for therapists, private school, and all other sorts of treatment programs. Imagine if a 5 dollar app can replace a 5000$ machine/treatment program. Now make that.
The final one, is something universal to all parents not just parents of autistic children, but felt especially deeper by them. Any sort of app or technology that can address this pain will be successful, because it’s the reason why parents spend hours and days obsessively researching ASD, moving to a different city because the schools are better, spending half a million dollars on therapy and treatments, and day in and day out be the best parents they can be for their children.
We want to create a technology/app for the superhero parents/caretakers that takes some of these pains and delegates them to technology, so they don’t have to worry about their child not getting the right nutrition, or not being able to find a suitable babysitter. That way they can do their real jobs, having dreams for their children.
Neither me nor my family have any experience with autism, but I just want to dedicate this for my wonderful parents, I love them very much, and doing the appjam is a reminder of that.
Erick
