Sakhi - App Identity

This module's task was to design the identity for a fictional mobile app. I used this as an opportunity to give a face to a concept I had worked on in a hackathon - Sequoia::Design.

Sakhi

Proactive over reactive

The app is targeted at mothers of newborn children, especially those in rural areas. Often, serious illnesses such as diarrhoea and pneumonia have rather benign symptoms which can go ignored. With Sakhi, mothers can easily detect such illnesses in their newborns without having to rush to the nearest Healthcare Centre (which is often not very near).

Sakhi asks the mother a set of questions that gradually zeroes in on a likely illness, akin to the parlour game Twenty Questions or the AI-powered Akinator. Once the illness has been identified, it displays the seriousness of the illness, and the location and number of the nearest Healthcare Centre with appropriate facilities.

For more information on Sakhi, follow this link - Sakhi.pdf.

Direction

Being an app targeted at mothers in rural areas, I decided to go for an identity that makes the app feel like a close friend, or a confidante of the mother. To achieve this, I worked on an identity that inspires feelings of trust, companionship and closeness.

Colour Scheme

I chose a colour scheme that exudes warmth, closeness and feminity without seeming garish or cliché. Here are some of my explorations -

Name

I chose to present the name in Hindi, being the most widely spoken language in India, and saw this as crucial to connecting with the maximum number of Indians. Moreover, I intended the app to support multiple Indian languages, considering that its primary user base resides in rural India.

In Hindi, sakhi is a close female friend (usually that of another female). This is in alignment with the identity being geared towards seeming like a close friend to the mother. Its slogan translates to Your Child's Well Wisher.

Typeface

For the typeface, I chose Noto Sans primarily for its wide character support across multiple scripts. I retained the same typeface for the identity so that it may be easily recognized from the app homescreen (under the reasonable assumption that Android is the OS).