Empowering young people with Asperger’s
In spring 2015, I went back to CIID to join the school’s incubator program, where I collaborated with my former classmate Anders Erlendsson to continue his thesis project Remories. Over three months, I worked as the UI/UX designer together with Anders, a UX researcher, and an iOS developer to create a tool that helps young people with Asperger’s build confidence and navigate everyday challenges.
Context
Goal
Create a digital tool that helps young people with Asperger’s build confidence and navigate everyday challenges.
Outcome
A companion app for young people with Asperger's
Remories is a digital companion that helps users capture moments of success and recall coping strategies when facing difficult situations. It encourages progress toward self-defined goals through positive reinforcement, gamification, and community support.
Process
Co-creation
Throughout our process, we spent more than 100 hours interviewing and co-creating with young people with Asperger’s, their parents, teachers and therapists. We prototyped and tested continuously to refine both interaction and communication.
One early experiment — a slider to adjust a smiley face for mood tracking — failed in testing, as psychologists confirmed that many users struggled with interpreting metaphors and abstract symbols. We iterated toward a clearer list interface that combined text, icons, and color to reinforce meaning.
Design principles
We also learned that feeling “good” didn’t always mean readiness for a difficult task. Instead of imposing training goals, we designed non-judgmental pathways that respected individual pacing, with all copy reviewed by therapists to ensure clarity and empathy. From these learnings, we derived a set of design principles that guided the rest of the project.
Don't distract
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Too many signals = overload. Keep it calm: simple layouts, clear words, and just enough motion to guide, never to overwhelm.
Don't shame
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Nobody wants to feel like a patient. Remories should look modern, feel uplifting, and celebrate people—not problems.
Don't pressure
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Progress comes with encouragement, not force. Focus on wins, offer light nudges, and let users move at their own pace.