Interaction - Bachelor

My Backyard

My Backyard is a reflective journal app for user with social anxiety to record their past social experiences and build up social confidence. People with social anxiety often feel less confident and scared to socialise due to their previous bad social experiences. The goal of this application is to provide a safe and calming space where users can visualise their journey of socialising. It aims to grow their confidence in interpersonal experience.  

Rachel Kai Xuan Yong

TONE AND VISUAL STYLE

The overall tone of this application is friendly, calming, and less stressful, forming a safe atmosphere for users to express themselves. The hand-drawn illustration style also fosters emotional connections with the audience and provides a sense of human touch, making them feel approachable.  

KEY FEATURES  

The key feature of the app is the ability to record users’ social experiences. The user can record their both “social”and “others” experience, representing verbal and behavioural interaction respectively, by customising the appearance of the pets and plants. Thus, each pet or plant represents a person or incident they have gone through, serving as a visualisation of their social progress. The customisation process is as follows:

Apart from recording experiences, the app also enables users to track their anxiety changes, collect badges, and review past interactions. By integrating light gamification, it also motivates users to continue participating in social events.

Three screenshot showing other features. The first image is the profile page with a line graph showing the anxiety level change. The second image shows the achievement badges. The third image is the profile page for reviewing past social experience.

MY Backyard

Design video

Ultimately, My Backyard helps users with social anxiety overcome fear and grow confidence by transforming reflection into an emotionally supportive process.

Rachel Kai Xuan Yong

Rachel is a passionate interaction designer who focuses on creating meaningful and engaging user experiences. She enjoys working in web design and UX/UI projects, where she is dedicated to creating user-friendly and visually appealing digital experiences.