📝Confidentiality note: This project was developed for a client, so certain details related to branding and implementation are not publicly disclosed. If you’d like to learn more about the process, decisions, or outcomes, I’d be happy to share more in conversation.
Overview
Growing Resilience is an interactive educational tool designed for the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Recovery Center of Excellence. The experience translates complex public health research on Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and Positive Childhood Experiences (PCEs) into an approachable digital format for families. I led the design of a gamified, drag-and-drop digital garden that allows users to actively build environments that support children’s wellbeing. Each object placed in the garden represents a resilience-building activity, environment, or relationship, helping families understand how everyday actions contribute to long-term health outcomes.
The project focused on transforming dense research into an engaging, behavior-driven learning experience that works effectively for rural communities, where mobile access and attention constraints are critical considerations.
Live Prototype
My Role
Lead Product Designer - owned the experience end-to-end across research, product strategy, interaction design, and UI execution.
Target Audience🎯
Designed for rural families and caregivers, many of whom are accessing content on mobile devices with limited time and familiarity with clinical terminology.
The experience prioritizes simplicity, clarity, and low-effort interaction, making resilience concepts easy to understand and apply in everyday life.
The Challenge 💡
Research on ACEs and childhood resilience is typically communicated through reports, clinical frameworks, or long-form educational materials designed for healthcare professionals.
For families, especially in rural communities, these resources present key barriers:
• Information overload – long, text-heavy explanations are difficult to engage with in day-to-day life
• Low retention – passive reading rarely translates into real behavioral change
• Limited access and attention – users often rely on mobile devices, have limited time, and may not engage with complex or unfamiliar digital interactions
The challenge was not just to simplify the content, but to translate it into an experience that feels natural, low-effort, and easy to engage with, while still maintaining the credibility of a medical institution.
Product Strategy 🔮
Rather than presenting resilience as a list of recommendations, we reframed the experience around participatory learning.
The central concept became a digital resilience garden, where users actively construct environments that support child development.
This metaphor helped achieve three goals:
• Make abstract concepts tangible
• Encourage exploration instead of passive reading
• Create emotional engagement through visual storytelling
Each object in the garden represented a PCE category such as emotional safety, supportive relationships, learning opportunities, or community belonging.
Design Process 🚀
Exploring the garden metaphor
We began by expanding on the client’s garden idea, exploring multiple UI styles and visual directions. I sketched different layouts for how the garden could look—whether lush and playful, minimal and symbolic, or somewhere in between. The challenge was to find the right balance between warmth and credibility, keeping the experience family-friendly without losing its connection to a medical institution.
Wire-framing and layouts explorations
Once the concept was aligned, we created low-fidelity wireframes to map the user flow. The design was structured around an inventory bar from which users could pick items (trees, plants, tools, etc.) and place them into their garden. Each placement triggered a short educational pop-up, linking the action to a PCE theme such as emotional support, learning opportunities, or community connection.
Initial layout explorations highlighted the importance of simplifying navigation and rethinking content structure to transform complex topics into an interactive, user-friendly experience for rural audiences.
Final Outcome
Design Decisions & Impact
Guided onboarding for clarity
Introduced a lightweight onboarding panel to help users quickly understand how to interact with the experience, reducing initial confusion and cognitive load.
From information to interaction
Reframed dense educational content into a participatory experience, allowing users to actively build a garden and learn resilience concepts through doing rather than reading.
Intuitive drag-and-drop system
Designed an inventory-based interaction model that feels familiar and easy to use, especially for mobile-first users.
Learning through immediate feedback
Connected each user action to contextual learning, where placing an object reveals its meaning, improving engagement and retention.
Mobile-first by default
Optimized layouts, spacing, and touch targets for smaller screens, ensuring accessibility for rural audiences who primarily rely on mobile devices.
Progressive disclosure of content
Separated core interaction from deeper educational content, allowing users to explore at their own pace without feeling overwhelmed.
Supporting deeper learning with a glossary
Introduced a structured glossary as a secondary layer for users who want to explore concepts in more depth without interrupting the main experience.
Balancing trust with approachability
Combined a clean, structured layout with warm, nature-inspired visuals to maintain medical credibility while staying engaging for families.
Designed for behavior change
Focused on making resilience concepts actionable and memorable, moving beyond awareness to encourage real-world application
Main Interaction Design ❇️
The core interaction model centers around drag-and-drop garden building.
Users select items from an inventory and place them into their garden. Each action triggers contextual learning cards that explain the resilience principle behind the object.
This interaction design shifts the experience from reading about resilience → actively building it.
Key design considerations included:
• Large touch targets for mobile usability
• Immediate feedback and micro-interactions
• Short, digestible educational prompts
• Progressive exploration rather than overwhelming information
Drag-and-Drop action
The prototype allowed us to validate:
• drag-and-drop mechanics
• touch interactions on mobile devices
• animation feedback for object placement
• clarity of learning prompts
Visual design system
The visual language balances approachability and credibility.
To achieve this, we developed a design system that combined:
• nature-inspired illustrations reflecting the garden metaphor
• accessible color palettes aligned with URMC branding
• clear visual hierarchy for educational prompts
• consistent iconography and object design
Each garden object was custom illustrated to maintain stylistic consistency while remaining culturally neutral and broadly relatable.
Key Features ⚡️
• Interactive drag-and-drop garden building
• Contextual learning prompts tied to resilience concepts
• Mobile-first interaction design
• Custom illustration system
• Seamless integration with URMC brand standards
Outcome 🏆
The final prototype successfully translated complex public health research into an interactive experience that is engaging, approachable, and easy to understand.
By shifting from static educational content to participatory design, the project helped make resilience-building concepts more tangible for families.
The Recovery Center of Excellence responded positively to the direction, highlighting the experience as engaging, memorable, and aligned with their mission of community education and prevention.
Design & Impact Alignment 🤝
The experience translates complex research on childhood resilience into an interactive, easy-to-understand format for families.
By combining playful interaction with educational content, the design improves engagement, comprehension, and accessibility, supporting the goal of increasing awareness and promoting positive childhood experiences.
