Autism360

A UX audit and app redesign

  • App
  • UX Research

4 min read

Four high-fidelity concepts of the redesigned Autism360 sign-in screen, with the Autism360 logo on a purple-to-pink gradient header.
Role
First UX Designer on a small in-house product team
Team
CEO, CTO and COO, senior React engineers and test engineers
Users
Parents and carers of autistic children, on iOS and Android
Year
2023

As Autism360's first UX Designer, I aligned its leadership on what the app experience should be, audited the app on iOS and Android, and proposed a redesign ahead of an international launch.

Autism360 gives parents and carers a digital therapeutic platform for supporting the autistic children in their care: self-paced courses from expert therapists, real-time online consultations, resources and community support.

Impact

Challenge

My brief was to audit the user experience of the Autism360 app on Android and iOS, and work through a backlog of design tasks with stakeholders, senior React engineers and test engineers. With a soft marketing launch into six new markets close, the app needed to be clearer and more appealing, and to carry the brand better.

The UX workshop

I ran a face-to-face workshop with the three key decision-makers: the CEO, CTO and COO. In the morning we discussed what the Autism360 experience should be: how users should feel, and what they should learn and understand. Then I helped them pinpoint and prioritise the areas needing the most work.

Over lunch I organised the morning's findings, and in the afternoon ran a card sort that grouped them under three themes:

User needs

Understanding their child's developmental journey and progress in the app, and access to reviews from other Autism360 users

Company goals

Clear communication of Autism360's mission, research-backed approach and reputation

Design considerations

Personalisation for each child's needs, strong security, a user-friendly interface, and clear trial and pricing

I then wrote user statements from the discussions, and stakeholders placed each one under the issue it addressed.

Questions users would ask, then voting on what Autism360 is currently doing well on and not so well on addressing.
The card sort: findings grouped under user, company and design.

Building user empathy

Using those user needs, I helped the team prioritise how new users could get started in the mobile app faster. The flow begins with the Welcome to Autism360 email sent automatically after someone subscribes, in the app or on the website.

To deepen our understanding of Autism360's users, I then ran a follow-up empathy mapping workshop on Zoom, exploring what users say, think, do and feel.

A quicker start: from the welcome email to onboarding in the app.

Auditing the current app

With no budget for formal usability testing, I went through the app myself as a new user would, from sign-up through every feature. I tested on two builds: the released app on my iPhone, exactly as users download it, and the pre-release build on TestFlight, so I could catch differences between what was in development and what users actually got.

The screens most in need of work were login, purchase and success, and the landing screens for Home and Courses, Program, Sessions, Workshops and Resources.

Before: login, purchase and success.
Before: the main landing screens.

Ideation & Prototyping

In a later presentation I showed a mood board connecting the Autism360 brand to the app's look, and proposed an illustrative UI style aimed at wider appeal: modern, but built to stay current for years as the product expanded into new markets.

With the CEO backing the direction, I moved into wireframes to improve the app's functionality and clarity, and proposed running two tracks in parallel: refining the existing backlog while building a fully redesigned experience with a balanced visual hierarchy and a stronger brand.

Onboarding

Illustration style

Project Reflection

Outcome

My time at Autism360 ended unexpectedly, and the designs weren't implemented in the next iOS or Android release. They remain in Autism360's design repository, and I'm proud to have contributed them to a service that supports the disability sector and the carers within it.

What I learned

Bringing the three leaders into one room early turned competing priorities into a shared set of user needs, company goals and design considerations. Any future redesign can build on that foundation.

Have a project in mind?

Let's discuss how my design system, accessibility and product strategy skills can help your team.

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