A Product Design Proposal
AMITY
THE BRIEF
The brief was to develop an innovative product or object to support individuals to connect with each other beyond the confines of their homes. I focused on teenagers who have lost a loved one, and who potentially don’t have anyone to speak to, or feel alone and need that support. My initial expectation for the project was to end up with an app that made teenagers feel less isolated and help them through this difficult journey in their life.
These are sections from the app
PROCESS & EXPERIENCE
I began the project by gaining insights into pre-existing products in the market aimed at helping young people who are or have been grieving. The market results were quite surprising, with very few products out there to help them, and learning that the most common form of support given was counseling. I also had the chance to talk to a group of teenagers and find out what their thoughts were on the support they had received, which gave me a lot of ideas as to how I could design my product with some unique features. The group also gave useful feedback on the designs for the product throughout the process.
I took the unique approach of making this app not focus on ‘grief’ entirely which is why the app was designed with bright colours to create a sense of positivity. The other different approaches I took with this app was by creating a new game called ‘smash’ to allow them to get their anger out in a controlled environment, and the emotion tracker where using ‘Plutchik’s emotion theory’, they learn vocabulary which can help them to explain how they’re feeling to their friends and family.
The tracker and emotion pages on the Amity app
I was pleased with the outcome of the product, I felt it reached the primary goal of the brief by connecting people together from the confines of their homes, and it reached my personal goal for the project which was to give teenagers that support after losing a loved one. I learned many new skills during the design process, which will enable me to improve in my future work. I enjoyed the user experience research side of the project as that was what gave me the ideas and the motivation to create something to help a group of people.