Amayz
One app that brings New Jersey's autism community everything scattered across counties, clinics, and case files — activities, care, laws, benefits, and answers — into a single calm place.
Support exists. Finding it doesn't feel that way.
Families and autistic adults in New Jersey aren't short on support — they're short on a single place to find it. Activities are listed by county. Clinics live in separate directories. Emergency numbers are on a photocopied handout. Laws and benefits sit in state PDFs. Awareness material for siblings and classmates is scattered across YouTube. Every one of these lives somewhere else.
Amayz was conceived to close that gap: one app, organized around the real questions a family asks — what's near us, who can help, what are we entitled to, and what do we need to know — instead of the org chart of the agencies behind them.
Three people, one app
The information a newly-diagnosed toddler's parent needs looks nothing like what an autistic adult managing their own care needs. Amayz had to serve both without splitting into two products.
Early days, most questions
Looking for nearby activities, early intervention services, and a plain-language explanation of what comes next.
Managing their own life
Needs continuing education, residential and employment options, and rights & benefits information written for them, not about them.
Coordinating support
References clinics, schools, and government aid programs across counties on behalf of someone else.
Eight pillars, one navigation
Every feature request traced back to one of eight needs. These pillars became the backbone of the app's information architecture.
Local Activities
Find activities and events by county & location
Clinics & Care
Autism-related clinics and care providers nearby
Helpline & Emergency
One tap to helpline numbers and emergency contacts
Rights & Laws
Rules and laws protecting community welfare
Government Aid
Benefits and aid programs, explained plainly
Awareness Content
Videos & content for every age group
Schools
Programs and schools built for autistic students
Continuing Education
What's next after school — training & transition
From a pencil sketch to a working drawer
The eight pillars needed a home that didn't feel like eight separate apps. I started by sketching the navigation drawer by hand, testing how the pillars could group under fewer, clearer labels before touching a design tool.
Getting to know the household, not just the user
Because Amayz often serves a whole family rather than a single account holder, onboarding collects household and relationship details up front — so the content that follows (nearby clinics, age-appropriate awareness videos, school options) is already relevant instead of generic.
Everything, at a glance
The home screen surfaces all eight pillars as clear, evenly-weighted cards rather than a deep menu tree. No pillar is buried more than one tap from home — a deliberate choice for a userbase that ranges from a stressed new parent to a young autistic adult who prefers routine and predictability over exploration.
Tracking a child's progress, and knowing what to do next
Two of the earliest and most-requested screens: a milestone tracker parents can check against their own child's development, paired directly with early intervention guidance — so noticing a gap and finding help are one flow, not two.
Designing for the widest range of ability
Two screens built for very different life stages: AAC (augmentative & alternative communication) settings that support non-verbal users, and residential settings for adults and families exploring housing and long-term care options.
"What is Autism," written for every age group
Awareness content needed to work for a five-year-old sibling, a classmate, and a grandparent equally. Content is layered by age group and format — short videos for younger readers, longer explainers for adults — rather than a single one-size-fits-all article.
A starting point, not a diagnosis
A DSM-5 aligned questionnaire gives families a structured starting point before a clinical visit. The screen is framed deliberately as guidance toward a professional, not a replacement for one — language and layout were kept plain and reassuring rather than clinical.
Life beyond the clinic
Not every screen is about services. "Enhance Life" collects everyday quality-of-life resources, while sensory-friendly movies & plays connect families to entertainment they can actually attend — a direct answer to the "local activities" pillar.
Turning 21 is a cliff edge — this screen is the bridge
School-based services end at 21, often abruptly. This section walks families through what changes, what benefits carry over, and what to apply for well before that date arrives — one of the most anxiety-inducing gaps the app set out to close.
Designing calm into every screen
The visual language had to serve people who are easily overstimulated as often as people in a hurry. A few principles carried through every screen shown above:
Muted, low-contrast color palette and generous white space instead of bright, competing colors — reducing visual noise for sensory-sensitive users.
Legal, medical and government content rewritten in short, direct sentences — no jargon left unexplained.
Every pillar uses the same card and detail-page pattern, so once a user learns one section, they've learned them all.
Helpline and emergency contacts are never more than a single tap from anywhere in the app.
What this project asked of me
Designing for the autism community meant designing for an unusually wide range of ability, age, and need inside a single product — a five-year-old's sibling, a nonverbal adult, and an overwhelmed parent all open the same app. The biggest lesson was restraint: the right answer was rarely to add another feature, but to fold each new request back into the eight pillars already there, so the app grows without ever feeling more complicated to the people who need it most.