A cross-disciplinary support concept
A brand, character system and mobile learning experience developed as one connected design language.
MuddbbitCase 01 · ← IRIS RENPortfolio case study · 2019
Muddbbit
Parenting Support App &
Learning Experience Concept
Translating emotional and behavioural challenges in Chinese family education into a character-led learning system, ceramic objects and a mobile app.
View the case study
Character 01 / ExpressionA learning experience built across research, identity, objects and interface.
Muddbbit explores how parents might move beyond visible behaviour to better understand the emotional and family contexts beneath it.
Developed independently from initial research to final presentation, the concept combines a mobile learning experience with a character-led identity and a family of hand-built ceramic rabbits. Each medium does a different job: research frames the subject, objects make it tangible, and the interface makes it navigable.
Parents seeking an approachable point of entry
Initially conceived for Chinese parents aged 25-35 who felt unsure how to interpret recurring emotional or behavioural challenges.
Understanding before correction
To reframe difficult behaviour as a prompt for context, reflection and learning, not simply a problem to suppress.
Project thesis
When information feels abstract, a character can hold attention. When a subject feels judgemental, a story can create distance. When a system feels complex, structure can make the first step possible.
Make a serious subject approachable without making it simplistic.
Design question
How might a learning experience help parents look beyond visible behaviour and better understand the emotional contexts behind it?
Sensitivity
Emotional and behavioural challenges resist neat labels. The concept needed enough structure to guide without pretending to diagnose.
Cultural context
The project began from tensions I observed in Chinese family education discourse around achievement, obedience, care and independence.
Tone
Parenting guidance can feel clinical or judgemental. Muddbbit needed to feel young and inviting without becoming childish.
Translation
Research, physical characters and digital navigation had to read as one system rather than three adjacent outcomes.
One independent process, from framing the question to firing the objects.
I led every design decision and produced the project end to end.
- 01Background and desk research
- 02Audience framing and design insights
- 03Brand naming, identity and logo exploration
- 04Character design and ceramic making
- 05Information architecture and wireframes
- 06App interface and presentation boards
Organising recurring concerns into four navigable lenses.
The desk research looked for patterns behind the behaviours that parents often describe as confusing or difficult.
Reference reading included parenting theory, child-development material and public discussion available to me in 2019. Rather than treating the resulting themes as diagnoses, I used them as content lenses: a way to connect a visible behaviour with possible emotional, relational or environmental context.
Navigation lens
Emotional expression
Difficulty recognising, naming or communicating feelings. The design response makes an invisible inner world physically present.
Object translation
A quiet figure faces an accumulation of tiny objects, a private universe that is full, vivid and hard to articulate.
These clusters organised the concept; they were not intended as clinical diagnoses.
A single idea translated from clay to content architecture.
Why ceramics?
Control, care and uncertainty share the same material.
Ceramic making became both medium and metaphor. The maker can control preparation, pressure and form, yet firing always introduces uncertainty. Parenting carries a similar tension between intention and outcome.
The four objects were not decorative mascots added after the fact. Their posture, weight, surface and attached forms became the emotional logic of the digital categories.
01Research themes→02Behaviour lenses→03Ceramic characters→04Learning paths
Information architecture
From a visible concern to a deeper reading.
The app moves from a broad behaviour cluster to a specific concern, then offers possible context through three content modes.
- 01Select a behaviour cluster
- 02Explore a specific concern
- 03Consider origins and repercussions
- 04Read guidance, cases or stories
- 05Save or share useful material
Brand system
A face, a question mark and a repeatable field.
The logo compresses the rabbit into a circular face. Its nose reads like a question mark, a small cue for curiosity rather than judgement. Repeated as a pattern, it shifts between playful identity and restless visual noise.
CoralRedYellowBlueNavy
Physical character studies meet a structured mobile experience.
The final concept uses colour-coded entry points, character-led navigation and three reading modes: guidance, cases and stories. This makes dense material easier to approach.
Scroll horizontally to explore the screens →
The original boards, preserved as a record of the 2019 project.
What the project demonstrates and what I would change now.
Cross-disciplinary translation
Muddbbit shows my ability to move from a broad social question into a coherent brand, physical character family, content model and interface. It also records an independent process in which research, form and storytelling were developed together rather than sequentially.
Validate the model with people and experts
- Interview parents and caregivers with varied family structures.
- Invite child-development experts to review content and safeguards.
- Replace behaviour labels with a more needs- and context-based model.
- Test navigation, reading comfort and accessibility with users.
- Design privacy and escalation pathways before expanding services.
Muddbbit remains valuable to me not because every assumption still holds, but because it shows how I learned to connect research, material, narrative and interface, and where I would ask better questions today.