Pictability
A tactile, visual goal-setting tool co-designed with Plum Tree - refined over years of testing with hundreds of families to create an experience every family could take home, use independently, and make their own.
The Challenge
Plum Tree is a not-for-profit dedicated to supporting young children with disability and their families. At the heart of their work was Pictability, a visioning tool built around connection through touch and visuals.
It worked in sessions, but there was only one physical kit. Families could not take it home. The vision was bigger: every family deserved their own Pictability to use independently and return to over time.
The challenge was making that possible across cost, production, accessibility, and the realities of families often carrying significant fatigue and language barriers.
Our Approach
Pictability was refined over many years and many iterations, prototyped rapidly, tested with hundreds of families, and shaped by what happened in lived use.
Designing for independence was central. The visual language had to carry the experience without requiring facilitation, especially for culturally and linguistically diverse families.
Alongside the kit itself, we developed visual storytelling to make positive psychology frameworks understandable and usable beyond the session context.
The Solution
A printed kit product redesigned from the original Pictability foundation so every family could take one home, use it independently, and return to it over time.
Every element was shaped for lived context and low-friction use while preserving the rigour of Plum Tree’s evidence-based practice.
The accompanying visual storytelling gave families a practical pathway to continue engaging with the concepts outside facilitated sessions.
Outcomes
Over 2,000 kits have been distributed to families across Australia and internationally, a significant scale-up from the original single kit.
The box was further iterated for reliable postal delivery, and translation work is now underway to widen access further.
Accessibility & Lived Experience
Accessibility remained a core design input throughout: tactile flow, visual chunking, and low-text pathways were designed in from the start.
The outcome reflects families lived realities and supports independent use in real home environments.
Services Demonstrated
- Product Design and Development
- Visual Communication
- Visual Storytelling
- Co-Design and Human-Centred Design
- Accessibility-Led Design