Iron Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design · 2025
Moodo Emotions App
by Aishwarya Suresh and Jaylon Tellis
- A' Design Award 2025 Iron Winner in Interface, Interaction and User Experience Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Tinker Works
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 11,838
- Verification code A543D142FC · Verify this award
About Moodo Emotions App
Moodo is an engaging iPad app designed to help children recognize and express their emotions. Using an intuitive slider, kids can explore both basic emotions and their more nuanced layers. Guided by a friendly robot, they can identify their feelings and receive customized tips for managing them. By rethinking the traditional emotion wheel, Moodo makes emotional intelligence easy to understand, enjoyable, and accessible for young learners.
Moodo Emotions App by Aishwarya Suresh and Jaylon Tellis represents a thoughtful contribution to the expanding domain of digital wellness interfaces, where technology serves emotional awareness and mental health support through carefully considered visual communication and interaction design. Situated within the contemporary movement toward accessible mental health resources and the democratization of therapeutic tools through mobile platforms, this interface demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how visual design choices can facilitate vulnerable self-disclosure and emotional literacy development. The application appears to address the challenge of translating complex, often ambiguous internal affective states into discrete, selectable categories while maintaining nuance through its continuous slider mechanism rather than forcing users into rigid categorical selections. The chromatic strategy employed throughout the interface reveals considerable psychological acuity, with the calming deep teal background establishing a contemplative, safe environment that neither overwhelms with stimulation nor depresses with excessive darkness, while the luminous green gradient ascending through the central slider control evokes growth, vitality, and the organic processes of emotional fluctuation and recovery. The typographic hierarchy successfully balances warmth through the personalized greeting with clarity through the systematic emotional state labels, ensuring users can quickly comprehend and navigate the interface even during moments of emotional distress when cognitive resources may be diminished. The circular avatar providing affirmative feedback introduces a subtle anthropomorphic presence that acknowledges user input without imposing judgment, a delicate balance essential in wellness applications where users may approach interaction with existing shame, anxiety, or self-criticism. The vertical organization of the emotional spectrum from angry at the top descending through fearful, bad, happy, surprised, disgusted, and sad creates an intuitive spatial metaphor, though the positioning of "happy" at center rather than apex suggests a design philosophy that normalizes emotional diversity rather than privileging positive affect as superior or aspirational. The slider's continuous nature, allowing positioning between labeled states, demonstrates recognition that emotional experience exists along spectrums rather than in discrete categories, honoring the complexity of human affective life. The call-to-action inviting users to "Tell me more" suggests the interface functions as a gateway to deeper engagement, journaling, pattern analysis, or therapeutic resource access, positioning the initial emotion selection as the beginning rather than conclusion of meaningful interaction. The overall aesthetic aligns with contemporary wellness application conventions while avoiding the excessive cheerfulness or forced optimism that can alienate users experiencing difficult emotions, instead cultivating an atmosphere of measured calm and genuine acceptance. What meanings might emerge when we create digital spaces that honor the full spectrum of human emotional experience, and how does the translation of feeling into visual interface foster new forms of self-understanding and emotional agency?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Moodo is an innovative iPad app that helps kids understand and express their emotions in a fun, interactive way. Through a unique slider interface, children can easily explore core feelings and their subtle layers. With the guidance of a friendly robot character, they can pinpoint their emotions and receive personalized coping tips. Moodo reimagines the traditional emotion wheel, making emotional intelligence simple, engaging, and accessible for young minds.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- The app is for iPad and Android tablets which are commonly used devices by children
- Tags
- emotions, emotion wheel, dynamic slider, child, kids, children, friendly, robot, novel interactions, user experience, user interface, emotional intelligence, emotional development, education, emotional wellness, AI, dynamic dialog, GPT model
- Production Technology
- We used the design thinking process to create a solution for children to develop emotional intelligence. This iterative approach helped refine designs in Figma, producing wireframes, high fidelity screens, and interactive prototypes for user testing. The app integrates an emotion database and a conversational AI engine (e.g., GPT models) to drive dynamic, context-aware dialogues, enabling real-time emotional recognition, adaptive responses, and personalized interactions based on user input.
- Design Challenge
- Teaching young kids, especially about emotions which is a topic even adults struggle with, can be challenging. Our biggest challenge was taking a complex concept, traditionally shown in emotion wheel diagrams, and reimagining it in a way that is easy, engaging, and accessible for kids. Conducting usability studies and extracting meaningful insights was also an unexpected challenge as these young kids are just learning to express themselves.
- Project Duration
- Project inception was in December 2024 in Houston and Los Angeles. Brainstorming, ideation, user research, usability study and design iterations virtually took place in January 2025.
- Operation Flow
- Moodo starts with a friendly robot who helps the child identify their emotion using a unique slider. The robot mirrors the emotion and engages in an interactive dialogue. The background changes to match the mood, and the child is guided to explore more nuanced emotions. They can describe the situation behind their feelings to the robot. A weekly recap helps the child track emotional growth and reflect on their increasing emotional intelligence over time.
- Research
- A literature review on emotional development in children was conducted, tracing the evolution of emotions from infancy to adolescence. Research by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that emotional intelligence leads to more self-confident individuals. A usability study with children aged 5 to 8 provided insights that informed key adjustments, resulting in a simplified, child approved app designed to effectively engage young users while supporting their emotional development.
- Inspiration
- Inspired by my five year old son, Moodo helps young children understand and express their emotions. At this age, kids often struggle with feelings like frustration or anger, leading to tantrums. While there are tools for parents to identify emotions in babies and toddlers, there is a gap in resources designed to teach preschoolers about emotional intelligence. Moodo aims to fill that gap, helping kids recognize, understand, and express their emotions in healthy ways.
- Image Credits
- Image #1 : Creator (UX Tech Lead) Jaylon Tellis, Moodo, 2025
Image #2 : Creator (UX Tech Lead) Jaylon Tellis, Moodo, 2025
Image #3 : Creator (UX Tech Lead) Jaylon Tellis, Moodo, 2025
Image #4 : Creator (UX Design Lead) Aishwarya Suresh, Moodo, 2025
Image #5 : Creator (UX Design Lead) Aishwarya Suresh, Moodo, 2025 - Patents
- No Patents
Colors of Moodo Emotions App
Get Moodo Emotions App
UX Design for Educational Apps and Wellness Solutions
We specialize in creating intuitive, engaging interfaces for educational and wellness applications. Our award-winning design expertise transforms complex concepts into delightful user experiences that children and adults can easily understand and enjoy.
G0E23 Shop