TEAM MENTAL HEALTH

assignment 03 // project refinement2012.07.16 // week02.day01.monday

Yu JiKennethSarahYuntao Wang

overview

• Goal.

• Our mission is to create a device that betters a child’s mental health by allowing her to record her mental status through the act of storytelling and journaling; to help her achieve some sense of self and security at an early age, and project that awareness for mental health into adolescence and adulthood as the ultimate goal.

overview

• Premise/Market/Cause....for “Kids Like You.”

• Many children are exposed to healthy environments that lead them to become well-suited individuals in the adult world. However, according to the U.S. government statistics on child welfare, 5.9 million children in 2010 were involved in alleged maltreatment or abuse. Among these, 75% of reported victims suffered from neglect, 15% from physical abuse, 10% from cases involving sexual abuse, and 10% from psychological maltreatment. (www.childwelfare.gov) What’s more, over 25% of child bullies grow up to become criminal offenders.

• Unfortunately, eliciting information from children about what ails them is no easy task.

overview

• Concept.

• While young children cannot articulate at the level of adults about their emotional state, they do show the ability to relate to a representational object’s abstract character identity, with a richness for flexibility between characters as their roles alternate (Rhemtulla 2009 [Cognition 113:2, pp. 167-176]). The proposed device lets children identify with famous children’s book characters as their mental states, and build stories out of their experiences.

• As a storytelling device, this project aims to build connections---both external relationships that link children in the west with those in the east, as well as internal establishments of self and self worth. As a journaling device, it is a guided outlet for children who would otherwise have trouble identifying their emotional states---the victims address aggression, the aggressors lend articulate their frustrations.

• In the spirit of the institute, we are interested in making this a global storytelling phenomenon, whereby children of the East and the West come to share their cultures.

overview (concept sketch)

implementation plan

• Technology.We will implement the project as an Android application. Each journal entry or story begins with a set of guidelines and preset characters. The stories are developed as guided tasks. They involve prompts that let the child drag and drop characters. And they begin with broad questions such as “Which character do you feel like today?”, which change according to deterministic logic, such as “Who was left out when it was time to play?” The data will be collected and stored for the future use.

• Distribution. We’d like to entertain a distribution method inspired by the OLPC one-child-one-laptop campaign. For example, when a middle class family in the U.S. purchases an iPad/reader/primer for their child, the same model will be shipped to a child in rural China. The two families thus “adopt” each other, as their children take on the future of pen pal technology.

evaluation (+/-)

• does your concept solve a real problem?

• In correlations found in statistics about child welfare in the U.S., the highest population of adult child victims of neglect came from low-income families, and families with single mothers. More than 80% of perpetrators were parents, with the larger percentage being women. Three ethnicities comprised 88% of victims: African-American (21.9), Hispanic (21.4), and White (44.8).

• A considerable body of research has identified emotional competence as a crucial component in children’s adaptive social functioning and psychological adjustment. Emotional development begins early in life, and is a critical aspect of the development of overall brain architecture. While newborns’ and infants’ emotional development benefit from the straightforward tasks of caregiving, toddlers and preschoolers are more complex. “They depend on their emerging capacities to interpret their own personal experiences and understand what others are doing and thinking” (National Scientific Counsel on the Developing Child).

• Is it innovative? In the spirit of the institution, we’d like to entertain a distribution method adopted by the OLPC one-child-one-laptop campaign. For example, when a middle class family in the U.S. purchases an iPad/reader/primer for their child, the same model will be shipped to a child in rural China. The two families thus “adopt” each other, as their children take on the future of pen pal technology.

• Would anyone use it?

• Would anyone feel threatened by it?

evaluation (+/-)

• Does your concept solve a real problem? (cont.)

• The mental health of young children depends largely on the social and emotional state of their home environments---not only the relationships with their parents but other broadly established connections as well (Suveg, et al. 2006). (-) An issue of concern with this app is that it must keep children coming back, in order to create the effect of a strong and long-lasting bond.

• The real problem here requires a far-reaching intervention that can take place outside the classroom, and exists in spite of the perpetration of abuse or neglect. (+) The proposed project puts the power to adjust in the child herself.

• “By the end of preschool, children who have acquired a strong emotional foundation have the capacity to anticipate, talk about, and use their awareness of their own and others’ feelings to better manage everyday social interactions” (Suveg, et al.). Very young kids exhibit surprising capacity for deep and intense emotions, including anxiety and depression. (+) Even if the product is not used to share stories with others, as a journal, it allows an outlet for emotion that will sustain the child into adolescence.

evaluation (+/-)

• Is it innovative?

• Interactive children’s books and games exist in the market, but none offer to:

• (+) connect children with other children across the globe.

• (+) connect children with children from very different socio-economic status.

• (+) provide guided means to identifying their emotional awareness

• (+) provide insight to adults and professionals who the children have trouble communicating their mental state with.

evaluation (+/-)

• Would anyone use it?

• What’s tricky:

• (-) if it is rejected by the perpetrators of neglect/abuse (the family purchasers)

• (-) if it is not supported by child therapists

• What could sell it, in spite of these issues:

• (+) it is companion tool

• (+) it is a toy that frees up a tied up parent

• (+) it is a longer lasting “toy”

• (+) therapists need to see that it can be an aid in their profession, not an obstacle or replacement for their services, as it may give direct insight into a child’s mental state, as he/she relates to the representational objects discussed above.

evaluation (+/-)

• How feasible is it?

• What is less feasible

• (-) Substantiality

• (-) Hard to promote

• What is more feasible

• (+) Target population is easy to find

• (+) Easy and fun to use, which makes the kids adopt it quickly

• (+) Parents will love this

target customers

• 01//American child.

• Chuck is a boy in the top 3% of his Kindergarten class for weight and BMI; he is incessantly teased. He finds himself always alone on the playground, where others refuse to play with him, and so he eats more. After school, he sits in front of the TV, occupied with a great stash of junkfood until his mother comes home late at night, with a fast food dinner.

target customers

• 02//Chinese child.

• Bo Wu is the only child of the family. The whole family members love him even give him what he want. He become more and more selfish. He will cry when he can not fulfill his needs. He do not like play with other children just because his parent want him to be safe.

target customers

• 03//American parent.

• Avery is a single mother who juggles 3 minimum wage jobs and has no time to look after her only son, Chuck. She cannot afford care, so she leaves him in front of the TV with snacks bought for cheap in bulk to keep him occupied, and has the neighbor upstairs check in from time to time.

target customers

• 04//Chinese parent.

• One day, Fang Li, Bo Wu’s mother, get an ice-cream for him. Fang Li says to Bo Wu “Can I have a taste? ” Bo Wu’s reaction disappoints Fang Li when he put the whole ice-cream into his mouth as soon as possible.

target customers

• 05//American therapist.

• Every time Joe tries so hard to deal with the kids but he couldn’t, even he is one of the best therapists in town. He tested all kinds of methods to keep track of kids’ change of behaviors, but none of them actually worked.

target customers

• 06//Chinese therapist.

• Yu Wang is a psychologist in China. He tries so hard to deal with the kids with mental problems. He has to ask kids’ parent for help because the kids feel afraid about him and do not speak a lot. He want to collect the data of these kids’ daily life. So he want their parent to record the daily activities of the kids.

scenarios

• 01//American child who feel lonely.

• One day, as part of a program, Chuck receives an “lilPad”, a smart screen tablet for children with minimal requirements to run its main app. He is immediately networked with an only child from a wealthy family in Beijing, who is also lonely for companionship.

• Instead of spending his afternoons watching television he learns to send stories about living in the States, and receiving stories about his friend in China. Eventually, he aspires to play soccer, like his friend often does. He spends less time eating to fill his time.

scenarios

• 02//Chinese child who do not want to share.

• Fang Li, Bo Wu’s mother, give Bo Wu a gift named “lilPad”, a smart screen tablet for children with minimal requirements to run its main app. Bo Wu parent help him with networking with Chuck who is lonely for companionship.

• Firstly, Bo Wu feel afraid of Chuck. But after a while, he find Chuck sharing stories with him about living in the States. Bo Wu starts to tell his story about what he get from his daddy during his birthday. At the beginning, Bo Wu cry for what Chuck have in his house. Eventually, Fang Li find his boy want to share stories with Chuck and even want to share food with Chuck.

scenarios

• 03//American parent

• Through her social worker, she is signed up in the lilPad Program. She doesn’t know anything about families in Beijing, but she figures if it is a free toy from that will keep Chuck occupied, and, besides, it comes with the EBT stamps.

• Over time, she notices he spends more time outdoors with soccer friends, and less time being babysat by the television and cookies.

scenarios

• 04//Chinese parent

• Through Fang Li social worker, she is signed up in the lilPad Program. She doesn’t know anything about families in USA. As more communication with Chuck’s family. She get familiar with what kind of life Avery live in American.

• The most pleased thing is that she find Bo Wu more pleased to share with Chuck and some other people and become much more social.

scenarios

• 05//American therapist

• Joe start using technology to change the old-school diagnosed way. The fun tablet app did a really good job on tracking kid’s mood and now he can easily tell if the kid needs to be treated.

scenarios

• 06//Chinese therapist

• Yu Wang knows a lot about the kids according to the tracking system of the tablet app. He can track the patient’s situation by realizing kids’ mood.

references

• Child Welfare Information Gateway. (2012). Child Maltreatment 2010: Summary of key findings. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children’s Bureau.

• National Scientific Council on the Developing Child. Center on the Developing Child, Harvard University.

• Suveg, C.; P. C. Kendall; J. S. Comer; J. Robin. 2006. Emotion-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy for anxious youth: A multiple-baseline evaluation. Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.