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In the U.S., 3.5 million people live with some form of autism. They struggle with reading facial expressions and understanding emotions of others, and often have trouble fitting into the world around them. As a consequence, they are bullied and ostracized—kept at arm's length from peers and society at large. With FEL!X, a face-to-face program with mobile and iWatch technology, autism patients role-play characters from various times and cultures to comfortably see and test other perspectives.
GraffitiWall presents: FEL!X!
The FEL!X Apps: A New Social Skills Software Program Passes First Round of Testing with Autism Patients
FEL!X, a new software program that teaches social skills like empathy, has successfully passed its first round of testing in a group of patients on the autism spectrum. In a recent test by mental health professionals at the Fort Collins-based University of Colorado Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center (UCHealth), five patients used the game-like software, which uses historical and literary virtual and live action dramatic roleplaying to teach important social skills like empathy, cultural sensitivity, decision making, and the ability to read social cues.
A Huge Success
Part of the FEL!X process includes patients stepping into the shoes of various characters such as Benjamin Franklin, Cleopatra and Aristotle, then as themselves to discuss current subjects such as immigration like social acceptance. The FEL!X role-playing technique establishes a fun and safe way to delve into, explore and better understand problems and solutions common to humanity. FEL!X helps patients build socially acceptable behaviors like these, so that with practice, they become more routine.
Mental health professionals at UCHealth say there were surprised how much their patients enjoyed interacting both with the historical figures and willingly sharing their personal experiences--and problem-solving suggestions--with each other. Additionally, even though the patients ranged in age from 16 to 63 and came from a wide range of levels on the autism spectrum, they engaged in lively discussions and demonstrated great respect and patience towards one another. Weeks later, the patients continue to display improved levels of social confidence.
Watch some from our advisory team of brilliant Asperger patients, describe the power of dramatic role-playing.
Creating a Safe and Trusting Space
“FEL!X uses displacement, allowing patients to delve deeply into issues to explore relationships from multiple points of view,” said Dr. Kenneth Watanabe, a psychiatrist and the medical director of the UCHealth Mountain Crest center. “It creates an environment for patients to practice and master therapeutic techniques. FEL!X can be used as a fun, relaxing activity, and as a distraction mechanism, to avoid harming oneself and others.”
FEL!X was developed by GraffitiWall, a New York City-based immersive software developer. The FEL!X Team includes Linda Gottfried, the founder and creative director at GraffitiWall along with her brother, Joseph Gottfried, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the Mountain Crest center. Dr. Gottfried recognized the program’s potential to help his patients on the autism spectrum, and formed an advisory team for FEL!X that is now made up of patients, medical staff, educators and business leaders. After the first test of FEL!X with his patients, Dr. Gottfried is now committed to exploring the potential of FEL!X with more patients.
Coming off a very successful FEL!X event at UCHealth the FEL!X production team is further developing HIPPA-compliant and secure applications, which can run on mobile devices, laptop and wearables and includes multimedia chatting and sharing. The apps are customizable, allowing mental health professionals and teachers the ability to continually add and tweak fun activities to best fit their patients and students. There are robust assessment capabilities allowing therapists to better understand patients’ progress.
The first version of FEL!X is aimed at helping people who have autism spectrum disorder, since it’s been shown that autistic individuals often benefit from roleplaying everyday situations. FEL!X encourages users to step out of their everyday lives and into the shoes of historical and literary figures, so it gives them a chance to confront a variety of challenging obstacles, as well as share their experiences more honestly and safely. At the same time, FEL!X lets therapists who are working with the program guide their patients more effectively.
In the United States, some 3.5 million people now live with some form of autism. For many, autism makes it difficult to correctly interpret facial expressions and emotions, as well as show empathy, and that often causes them to be ostracized and bullied.
While the first version of FEL!X helps patients understand and respond to social cues, later versions will address topics like dealing with bullying, cyber privacy, and LGBTQ issues. As a result has applications for education, human resources, and cultural sensitivity.
Thanks to FEL!X’s success, the team is now designing FEL!X-based events specifically for middle and high school students in the upcoming school year. FEL!X advisors are currently working with historians and tech leaders, such as Andy Mink of the National Humanities Center based in Durham, N.C., to engage students in building historical empathy through dramatic role-playing.
Now Let's Meet the FEL!X Team
The FEL!X team is made up of GraffitiWall's Linda Gottfried along with Linda's brother, Joe Gottfried, MD, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Colorado's Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center. The FEL!X platform takes advantage of GraffitiWall's successes and takes it to the next level.
As Founder and Chief Creative Director, Linda has conceptualized and developed innovative and acclaimed immersive platforms. Her clients include AMC Networks, Aventis Pasteur, Macmillan Publishers, Smithsonian, JetBlue, Williams College, Dr. Seuss, Pharmacia, Time Warner, Philips NV, Scholastic, Konica, and AOL, as well as many cultural organizations. FEL!X has many stellar advisors, including Mary Ann McNair, who is an educator, historian, interactive content developer, digital storytelling facilitator, and award-winning, seasoned museum professional, currently focusing on digital media and helping people find their own voices and making meaning from their lived experiences.
FEL!X Advisors
FEL!X has a New Star Advisor!
Before the drumroll, here’s FEL!X’s brief history. Handful of years ago, Janina Quint, an award winning filmmaker, learned about the multiplayer game, Choices Change yOUR World, we designed for the Children’s Museum of Manhattan. This game was part of the museum’s larger school initiative and an extension of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Project. The game taught families, that healthy and unhealthy lifestyle choices not only affect an individual but it has a direct affect on the community at large. As the executive director describe this effort:
“Our goal is to change behavior and the power and flexibility of GraffitiWall® enables us to meet that mission. It gives us the tools to reach out and increase communication with our audiences exponentially.”
Janina suggested we rejig the software to teach kids ethics. Henceforth: FEL!X was born. Mary Ann McNair joined forces and we continued to snag talented folks to join the team. Janina stepped aside but thankfully she joined the FEL!X advisory team, which she continues to wear its hat. We continue to have a great team but Mary Ann, also needed to step fully down due to other projects and commitments. She chose to don the advisor cap and she is proud to join the luminary advisory board. We’re thrilled that she will continue to play a role in this important initiative. She deeply believes in the importance of FEL!X, and in the differences it can make. As an educator and historian, Mary Ann is dedicated to inviting people to better understand the past, in order to be more thoughtful and compassionate citizens. Thank you, MA.
Our Background
GraffitiWall has created an extensive list of multimedia immersive platforms for audiences, ranging from healthcare, to museums, to education, and television. Their touch screen programs at the Colorado History Museum, The National Archives, The Denver Zoo, The Denver Art Museum, The Montclair Art Museum and the Children's Museum of Manhattan were wildly popular and helped build audience by opening the door for visitors to see themselves as part of the story. Additionally interactive multiplayer games have been designed to teach and encourage changing behaviors, such as those built for museums and hospitals.
One of GraffitiWall's greatest achievements was our extremely successful second screen experience created for the AMC/Sundance Channel Global's most popular show Breaking Bad. Via the Breaking Bad GraffitiWall, fans could select from a cast of Breaking Bad avatars to role-play within virtual representations of the show's locations before, during and after the show aired. This created a show within a show. Not only did the Breaking Bad GraffitiWall initiative encourage tune in, but by the end of its run, the Breaking Bad GraffitiWall had more members than AMC/Sundance Channel Global's fan base on Twitter, and more members than it had viewers of this Emmy Award Winning show.
"Better Ask Saul!": video sneak preview of the game within the Breaking Bad GraffitiWall
After selling its social media patent portfolio to the largest internet and gaming Chinese firm, GraffitiWall staff committed to focusing on social justice initiatives. On one of our projects, we worked with the NYU Langone Medical Center's Rusk Institute of Rehabilitative Medicine and wheelchair-bound teen patients to design a 3-D simulation software. In this software, able-bodied users experience the world from the vantage of a wheelchair to better understand the realities and successes of disabled people.
GraffitiWall's Evolution Is FEL!X!
The common thread in GraffitiWall's interactives is an invitation to users to immerse themselves in situations that are outside their everyday experiences. From navigating the world in a virtual wheelchair, to holding Albert Bierstadt's palette of oil paints while deciding how to tell a visual story, to sending a telegraph to save an 1870s steam engine from plunging off a bridge, to walking through Breaking Bad locations as the key characters of the show, users step into the shoes of others.
Focus on Social Justice
After the last few Presidential elections, the GraffitiWall team discussed the finger pointing, name calling, and lack of discussion and deep listening that is required to help people find common ground. Since then, the political climate has only grown more volatile, and people have become more insular.
FEL!X was born to address this problem.
After Linda's brother Joe, a top psychiatrist in Colorado, saw FEL!X, he immediately recognized the potential power it has to assist mental health professionals and their patients, and joined the team. Dr. Joe and his colleagues suggested focusing on patients with Asperger Syndrome because they are often brilliant, creative, and techie, while needing to develop social skills.
The Need
As much as the general population could use help in being more empathetic and thoughtful, the challenge for these patients is greater still. They often have difficulty reading facial expressions and body language, which throws up an extra hurdle for understanding social cues. Patients have shared with us that they sometimes carry with them flash cards of facial expressions and the emotions they reflect to help them decipher what is going on with the people around them. Others tell us they work on their own facial expressions by looking at themselves in the mirror and memorizing the correct movements for showing happiness, sadness, confusion, and anger. In many cases, the displaying of emotions is quite foreign.
A Mom Speaks Out About the Benefits of Role-Playing
The Opportunity
We are developing FEL!X in phases, beginning with this effort—Phase 1—the creation of the face-to-face and online activities. We will follow up in Phase 2with a push to develop more multiple mobile and wearable applications, allowing patients instant access to the help they need at all times, and from multiple devices.
Revenue Model
It is standard practice for users to pay monthly subscriptions for health oriented mobile apps. Unfortunately most haven't been tested for efficacy. Not only will FEL!X be rigorously tested by patients and healthcare professionals, it will offer a set of fun, robust, and customizable activities, along with a backend that gathers behavioral data from multiple touch points. This will better inform both the patients and their healthcare providers on patient progress. FEL!X uses the subscription model, licensing the software as a service to healthcare facilities. Both the healthcare entities and FEL!X share revenue from patients' monthly subscriptions. For more details contact us at Linda@GraffitiWall.com.
Content Management System
FEL!X is cutting edge. Joe and his colleagues are constantly searching for tools that will enable their patients to practice techniques to build self awareness and increased empathy. With FEL!X, patients can work on their own without feeling judged, and at the same time, in-depth data on the actions of individual patients, as well as in the aggregate, is collected by therapists via a robust backend. The system's flexible templates allow the addition and growth of activities and topics, as well as the ability to expand to wider audience types. In this way, the learning process is expedited for patients and their doctors. With practice, patients are able to make socially acceptable behavior more routine for themselves, and perhaps even overcome some of the obstacles they face in trying to comfortably blend into society.
Roll out Plan
Under the guidance of our advisors at the University of Colorado Mountain Crest Behavioral Healthcare Center, the roll out is to start small and focussed. As we rigorously test FEL!X and get user feedback from our Asperger team, we will expand to more therapeutic techniques, implement the software with patients diagnosed with a broader range of issues, and continually add more content and topics targeted to a range of age groups. Mountain Crest has also shown a desire to expand into the community, reaching out to local schools and community centers. In parallel, we are developing FEL!X for multiple markets, such as education, human resources, and political advocacy.
Robust Visual Data!
FEL!X users can document their role-playing via videos selfies, as well as readily chat and share content within a closed social media platform designed specifically for them. The cross-platform software can be used on mobile devices, wearables, laptops, and desktops, to provide immersive, experiential activities. This also provides in-depth user data from multiple touch points. For example, by incorporating the ability to rate heartbeats before, during, and after FEL!X activities, including points of high-drama role-playing, the range of time-stamped measurements provides additional visual progress reports. Added to the patients’ video selfies, keyword collection, and the robust tracking capabilities on the backend, healthcare professionals will have an enhanced understanding their patients, both individually and in the aggregate.
Our Patient and Healthcare Professional Advisory Team
Joe helped form an advisory team of patients and mental health professionals from the University of Colorado Health's Mountain Crest Behavioral Health Center. Each patient in this program is unique. Some are funny. Some are extremely proficient in many ways. Some are more social than others. But each one is fascinating. Everyone on the team has already provided us with great insights. They unanimously selected the topic of understanding social cues as the first topic to address with FEL!X. Their primary goal is to build a vocabulary of facial expressions, body language, and appropriate language to use in social settings.
Progress to Date
At this point, we have mocked up scenarios in terms of content and visuals, and we have storyboarded the front and backend features. We also have a fully operational GraffitiWall that we will utilize. Our tech lead/programming guru is lined up and ready to go, and has been providing us with valuable information as we work. In the past we worked with him on walk-in museum environments, so we are fully aware of the range of his abilities. His resume includes one of the first walk-in, software-controlled, interactive environments, Sony Wonder, as well as work with Levi's, Harper Row, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's ECHO Learning Center, and Audible.com, among others. As we said, he is a guru and knows how to make software user friendly, engaging, and just plain fun!
You can Help
The patients and staff at UCHealth's Mountain Crest Behavioral Health Center are thrilled to find a tool that will allow patients to not only mimic expressions, but to better understand why people feel the way they do in difficult situations. The doctors at Mountain Crest believe in the power of FEL!X to make this happen. And so do we.
Join us in making this important change a reality. We appreciate contributions of any size. You can also help by connecting us directly with groups and individuals you think might be interested in FEL!X or could benefit from it. Your feedback is always welcome!
What We Need for Phase 1 and What You Get
Phase 1 Deliverable: Working Prototype
UCHealth Mental Health Professionals will facilitate the activities with a select group of patients on the autism spectrum to develop and test the activities. We will also gather data for further analysis.
Total Project Goal: $52,000 (details below)
Project management: $7,000
Research and content: $7,000
Design, research, and user interface: $7,000
Programmer: $10,000
Videography: $2,000
Rent ten iPhones, iPads and Apple series 1 Watches: $10,000
T-Mobile phone service (12 months @ $250 per month for 10 6-gig lines: total $3,000
Web hosting: 12 months: $6,000
--------------------------------------------
SubTotal: $52,000
plus
Indiegogo and credit card fees of 10%
GRAND TOTAL: $57,200
Deliverable details:
FEL!X is a personal project of ours that we feel passionate about, which is why Dr Joe is donating his expertise for Phase 1 and the remainder of the team are donating the main bulk of their time. Below are the deliverables for Phase 1's prototype:
Working prototype includes:
Spruce up existing GraffitiWall infrastructure, including updating chat functions to be more robust and mobile friendly
Create user-friendly templates for the content management system (CMS)
Develop a fully working component: The first will be recognizing, perfecting and properly responding to social cues
Begin an archive of video selfies of character dramatization that patients can use as a reference to perfecting social cues
Gather information on what data patients, their caregivers, and healthcare professionals would like to collect to more effectively improve behavior
Work on connecting wearable info within backend
Videotape the process: Record dramatizations of individual and group role-playing scenarios, including mental health facilitation
Update the realtime virtual role-playing capabilities, using avatars online and mobile
Begin rigorous FEL!X testing for efficacy
If we receive more funding than requested, some of the excess will be utilized for developing multiple mobile apps. (See below for more details.) We are anticipating building more FEL!X components that address bullying, dating tips for autism spectrum patients, cyber privacy, and LGBTQ issues.
If we do not reach our goal of $52,000, the funds we collect will be used to fund a face-to-face version of FEL!X and create a low-tech content management template using various editing tools such as Google Sheets and Docs.
A Woman Can Dream.....
Some crowdsourcing campaigns go well over the amount requested. If we are fortunate to reach our ultimate target of approximately $184,000, the chart below illustrates the projected uses of those funds. (This includes the Indiegogo/credit card 10% charges.) Having this amount would enable us to create a robust set of mobile apps, the desktop content management system, and the activities for real-time role-playing activities. We would also be able to hire actors to role-play the sample scenarios, which serve as visual guides and a reference for users. Fingers are crossed!
The Perks
Any amount is welcome! Below are some perks as thanks for your generosity.
$25: Email thanks
Silver Level ($50): Thanks within the software credits
Gold Level ($100): Hip, glow-in-the-dark wristband printed with: The FEL!X App: Walk In Their Shoes. Stand Tall in Your Own! Your name is listed on the software thank-you credits in larger font size than Silver Level. (Sample image of the blue wristband below, available in blue, green, orange, pink, purple, red, white, and yellow.)
Platinum Level ($500): Two different colored glow-in-the-dark wristbands printed with: The FEL!X App: Walk In Their Shoes. Stand Tall in Your Own! Your name is listed on the software thank-you credits in larger font size than Gold Level.
Jade Level ($1,000): Your name is listed on the software thank-you credits in largest font size AND we'll make an avatar of you to include within FEL!X! Or, if you prefer, you may select three different-colored wristbands.
Major Supporter Level ($5,000): Your name is listed on the software thank-you credits in largest font size AND we'll make an avatar and two emoticons of you to include within FEL!X! Or, if you prefer, you can select four different-colored FEL!X wristbands printed with: The FEL!X App: Walk in Their Shoes. Walk Tall in Your Own! (Emoticon example below. We can make it in your own image or another image we agree is appropriate.)
Sponsorship Level ($10,000): Your company or personal brand icon is listed on the Sponsor Page, with link to sponsor's web site, and five personal emoticons are included within FEL!X. Or, if you prefer, you may select ten FEL!X wristbands printed with: The FEL!X App: Walk in Their Shoes. Walk Tall in Your Own!
The Impact
Your contribution can positively change lives. By walking in the shoes of historical and literary characters, patients will:
Understand multiple points of view
Interact with other patients, therapists, and their families and friends
Be able to distinguish emotions and reactions to important issues
Contemplate these issues and form their own opinions
Ultimately, feel more comfortable and in control of their behavior in social settings
Other Ways You Can Help
Please help us spread the word about FEL!X and the work we are trying to do on behalf of Asperger Syndrome patients.
Like us on Facebook and other social media sites.
Tell your family and friends about us.
Thank you!
Looking for more information?Check the project
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