Art With Heart Case Study

Challenge

Millions of kids have experienced trauma or live with adversity. Now in its third decade, Seattle-based non-profit Art with Heart taps into the healing power of art to help improve kids’ lives. Teachers, counselors and therapists work with the group’s art therapy lesson plans to engage children, help them deal with their situations, and help them better articulate their emotions. However, because the plans are not available in digital formats, it is hard to zero in on the right plans or scale the group’s impact to larger numbers of users. Also, much of the curriculum assumes longer working sessions than many of the leaders are able to schedule and manage.

Vision

To help the Art with Heart board envision meaningful change, Blink worked to understand the plans and discover ways to provide more flexibility to lesson leaders. As with every project we undertake, Blink engaged with the Art with Heart team to become aware of their goals and audience. This work helped us embrace and extend their brand in ways that are more effective. We conducted a number of workshops and recorded videos of user-testing sessions. Videos of these tests show how teachers and counselors struggle to make the most of the lesson plans. The team at Art with Heart is now better able to evangelize ideas for positive change to board members.

Results

Our envisioning work includes ways to make Art with Heart’s lesson plans far more easily available. It also offers the potential to get the plans in front of more counselors, teachers and therapists. In addition, our work envisions ways to tailor the plans to fit leaders’ time frames. This includes a “lesson discovery interface” that leaders could use to zero in on the right lesson plans. The interface sorts plans based on the kids’ grade levels, the number of kids involved, the available timeframe, and the particular types of challenges to be addressed.

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