Case Study of
"How to Be Friends with The Spider"
A playset for children who have arachnophobia
|Project Date: Sep 2021 — Apr 2022
|Role : UX & Product Designer
|Audience : Children from ages 4 to 6 & Parents or Gurgidans
|Project Summary
This project assists children aged four to six with arachnophobia through an interactive and entertaining linear design project. The final goal is to help stakeholders overcome arachnophobia so that they can enjoy outdoor activities and stay in a place where spiders appear without frustration. The design deliverable is a high-fidelity prototype of a children’s playset, including an interactive e-book and three activities connecting to the storyline of the e-book. The playsets will be in three stages, each stage having three different episodes. In the first stage, users will focus on becoming familiar with a spider character, Coco, and learning spiders are not aggressive insects while in their house, the spider web. Stage two will assist users in achieving a goal, encountering more numbers of spiders at once, alongside stage three which phases users into facing realistic-looking spiders.
As to how the phobia therapy section starts, clients will have to take a parent-guided self-assessment to check their level of anxiety, avoidance, fear, and spider-related beliefs. The grades are calculated from 0 to 10, and the playset’s stages and episodes will be determined based on the assessment result. Stakeholders must report their status every time they play with playsets and check their recovery process.
|User Research
1. Symptoms of Arachnophobia
The project was started by conducting research on arachnophobia data. The very first step was secondary research, collecting information about the physical and emotional symptoms of arachnophobia and how therapists treat with people with this phobia. The article, “Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders and how to overcome it” by Rosemary Black, speaks that symptoms of arachnophobia appear initially during childhood and adolescence. People with arachnophobia react with two general symptoms, physical and emotional, this may manifest itself as difficulty breathing and feeling overwhelming anxiety or panic (Black). Within the article, Black emphasizes that “if they encounter a spider, they may leave the house rather than deal with it.” To manage ordinary living in their basement or garage, in nature or even inside a house, children would have to overcome their fear of spiders.
2. Therapy Methods
What would be the best way to overcome the phobia? According to my research, the most effective treatments for phobia are exposure therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). Thus, gradually and repeatedly exposing stakeholders to spiders in a safe and controlled way will be the core method of my playset to assist children in overcoming arachnophobia.
3. Sophia with Arachnophobia
My persona is Sophia, who is a five-year-old girl with arachnophobia. She loves friends and playing with her best friends in pre-school. She is bright, outgoing, and talkative; however, the only time she is depressed is when her besties go out for a scavenger hunt in nature. Due to her arachnophobia, she could not join her friends and had to stay inside the class without classmates. Sophia wants to overcome her phobia to associate with her best friends.
4. Activities for Children Ages 4 to 6
To examine the best options to grab the attention of children aged between four to six, secondary and primary research methods were used. I conducted data collection via the internet and surveyed parents about their children’s favourite activities. “25 best educational toys for 5-year-olds” by Barnes P. states that children between four to five are the most suitable age to introduce interactive educational toys. This is when they start to imagine and fantasize about different professions like police officers, teachers, etc. The survey took place on Google asking parents to pick their children’s favourite plays as much as they can among twelve lists of children’s activities. The three most voted activities are drawing, crafting, and playing with 3d toys. Those gathered and analyzed data will be used for my design approach.
5. Interview with an Art Therapist
Before diving into the design approach, I interviewed a person who was involved the Korean Art Therapist Association for more than ten years to get more detailed and accurate information on phobia and therapy treatment. Furthermore, I also looked into two case studies, Narrative Exposure Therapy in Children: a Case Study and Treating cockroach phobia using a serious game on a mobile phone and augmented reality exposure: A single case study to understand the general process of exposure therapy. The highlight from the interview with the therapist is that exposure therapy is the most common method. They expose sound, 2D models and 3D models of feared objects and actual objects inside a tube in sequence to people with arachnophobia. In addition, she pointed out some risks to avoid, which are not finishing three activities in one day, being well-informed before guiding children and going through all activities again before getting onto the next step. The case studies have shown that all therapists measure the level of frustration of the feared target before and during therapy sections to keep track of their status.
|Design Approach
1. Initial Idea
I approached my design by developing a playset for children with arachnophobia with 100 initial idea sketches. In the sketches, I laid out the possible activities and designs. My first design idea was selected from the idea drawings, three interactive activities and a parents’ guidebook. The first activity ideas were a fear ladder, spider image cards, a spider toy, and a pop-up storybook. In this stage, I was planning to develop a screen free design solution.
2. User Testing
Before diving into the final design decision, I built low and mid fidelity prototypes step by step, collecting user feedback for each prototype. The most common comments after testing the mid fidelity prototype were that I needed to consider where the fear comes from and challenges that people with arachnophobia could encounter while getting treatment and how to apply answers into my design. To adopt the user feedback, I went back to a basic step by going through the thought development process.
These are three main questions for the thought development:
• How can both parents and children interact with the playset?
• What risks that the playset can bring?
• How can children interact with nature and harmless insects in a respectful manner?
Additionally, I received feedback saying the design idea was too simple and flat, which could be designed by non-interaction designer. Thus, I planned to develop a long-term project with enjoyable and entertaining interactive objects.
3. Parent-guide Self-Assessment Kit
I reverted to the beginning to re-design the interactive playset as a linear project and adding sensory options. The final design plan was creating a playset as a series of three stages and three episodes in each stage to develop as a linear project. Also, a parent-guided self-assessment was added to keep track of children’s levels of anxiety, fear, avoidance and spider-related beliefs and to choose the correct stages and episodes of the playset. Following the user feedback, the parent-guided self-assessment will be held by parents asking questions such as “How much are you afraid of spiders?” and leading their answers by providing different feelings children could feel. For example, level zero will be stated as “I love to touch and catch spiders. I love to play with them,” and level ten will be assigned as “I do not even go to a space where spiders might exist.” There will be statements under each level, which will increase accessibility for both guardians and children. The results will be recorded on scale-printed paper with face emoji stickers, which could be attached to a fridge or every day passing object.
4. First Episode from the First Stage
Finally, I jumped into one specific playset among nine different playsets. The very first playset, introducing our spider character Coco, was chosen to showcase how the playset is professionally designed by the expert. The storyline was inspired by the book named, “Merry Christmas Big Hungry Bear” by Audrey Wood and Don Wood and will be used as a guideline for activities instead of a long text-only guidebook. The story is dramatized adequately into three activities introducing our spider character, Coco. In the first story, the character Coco will not make an appearance until the end of the very last activity. My initial idea was to have a textured, pop-up book, but I decided to make an interactive e-book after gathering the user feedback and researching the current trends. Children could simply access the e-book with their iPad or other tablets scanning the QR code inside the playset, and the e-book itself will contain activity videos so that children can easily follow the activities without much help from their parents. The storybook will indicate when to do the correct activities by having indicators on the right top corner. Before doing each activity, guide videos will ask children if they are ready to encounter Coco, or they will ask children to stop if they are not feeling okay with this play. Additionally, the book will not ask children to have reading skills with built-in audio in the book.
|Conclusions
1. What I Learned
• Gathering more relevant research data, such as similar design’s case studies, will lead you to come out with more functionally and effective design.
• If stakeholders’ age is too young so that they cannot speak their thinking correctly, parents or guardians could be another way to get feedback or solutions.
• Interaction designers have to come out with design solutions that are more than static, one-time design solutions. We are seeking to assist stakeholders by fulfilling their needs continuously without interruption.
2. What If with Different User Testers
Due to COVID restrictions, it was difficult to access young children directly. Thus, user testing was held by parents with children ages 4 to 6, preschool teachers and colleagues. The result was quite gratified; however, what if I had a chance to test with my target users. Then, the testing process would be more diverse and dynamic. Because children sometimes come out with non-predictable behaviours, I might encounter an unexpected situation and prepare for countermeasures. If I record and watch how children are interacting with the playset, it would be uncomplicated to get the points where they are struggling. Additionally, children might suggest surprising ideas with their innocent and pure perspectives.
3. Creating a “Design Format” for Other Phobias
Due to its solid and straight-forwarded structure, this playset could be a “Design Format” for any type of phobia that requires exposure therapy. It is possible to substitute other living creatures or even inanimate objects instead of the character spider, Coco. My playset could be a sample resource to create a guideline to quickly design playsets for phobias for other designers or people who hope to overcome other phobias. It can be simple, for example, to leave Coco’s space empty for other personified feared objects in the storybook so that other people could easily replace them. Activities can also be offered with some unfilled areas instead of Coco, or diverse activities can be recommended so that people could choose them based on what kind of phobia they want to work on.
4. In Addition
The project was focused on developing the contents of the playset, not the playset’s package design. Therefore, the box and the way each activity supplies are packed are in the first stage. The future goal of this project is to design the final product with a suitable playset box and supplies packaged in it related to the theme and the way children can functionally unpack it.
|Works Cited
• Age-by-age guide to toys. Parents. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.parents.com/fun/toys/kid-toys/toys-for-all-ages/?slide=slide_90a054a2-b9cf-41d2-b631-17af5abec9b8#slide_90a054a2-b9cf-41d2-b631-17af5abec9b8
• Article by: Rosemary Black. (2019, September 12). Arachnophobia: Fear of spiders and how to overcome it. Psycom.net — Mental Health Treatment Resource Since 1996. Retrieved April 11, 2022, from https://www.psycom.net/arachnophobia-fear-of-spiders
• Barnes, P. (2022, April 9). 25 best educational toys for 5-year-olds (2022 reviews). Mom Loves Best. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://momlovesbest.com/educational-toys-for-5-year-olds
• Botella, C., Breton-L pez, J., Quero, S., Banos, R. M., Garcia-Palacios, A., Zaragoza, I., & Alcaniz, M. (2011, January). Treating cockroach phobia using a serious game on a mobile phone and augmented reality exposure: A single case study. Computers in Human Behavior, 27(1), 217–227.
• Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research. (2016, October 19). Specific phobias. Mayo Clinic. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/specific-phobias/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20355162
• Schauer, E., Neuner, F., Elbert, T., Ertl, V., Onyut, L. P., Odenwald, M., & Schauer, M. (2004). Narrative Exposure Therapy in Children: a Case Study, First publ. in: Intervention 2, 18–32.
• Smith, M., Robinson, L., Segal, R., & Segal, J. (2022, April 6). Phobias and irrational fears. HelpGuide.org. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.helpguide.org/articles/anxiety/phobias-and-irrational-fears.htm#
