Mission: Create outstanding apps to support people with autism and related difficulties. Put the user and their caregivers at the heart of the design process, making lifestyle apps with a therapeutic angle. Let’s harness the power of touchscreen devices to support therapy in a practical, cheap and fun way.
Product Currently In Development: HappyFoods is an iPhone application to empower teenagers with restrictive eating patterns to expand their range of acceptable foods.
Who am I? I’m 39 years old and live in London. I have kids aged between 15 and 3. My eldest has an ASD diagnosis. One of her challenges is very restricted eating – HappyFoods is something we designed together to empower her and to take the pressure off me. The original inspiration for Salt for my Squid is now 7. She had a severe expressive and receptive speech delay. It was really tough for a while. Apps were something that we used to take the pressure off – and it inspired me to learn to code in Swift in order to be able to write the apps that I wished existed. I’m a naturally geeky person – before doing this I was a mathematician. Not so good at the creative stuff – but luckily my eldest is good at art and does the graphics for me! It’s been slow getting started, but with my youngest starting school in September – the time is ‘now’ to make things happen.
April Update: I spent 2 weeks as a participant in Apple Entrepreneur Camp. Immense thanks for your support for getting me there – it was an amazing boost.
May Plan: Plan is to launch a basic version of HappyFoods out to testers shortly. Aim is for the full version to include some hot new tech, like machine learning – but the most important thing is that it clicks as a user experience with our kids – so please don’t be shy to tell me what you think of the prototypes.
How Can You Help?
Talk! Join the community on FB, follow me on Twitter, drop me an email, join the testing group – feed in fresh energy!
Subscribe to the mailing list, and forward this newsletter.
Join the team! We are looking for: researchers, community managers, graphic designers, swift coders and product managers at any skill level.
@saltformysquid
facebook.com/groups/SaltForMySquid/
SALT for my Squid 