Creating Q.ball is a personal endeavor I have taken on as a design project. As a childhood cancer survivor, I always want to give back to the pediatric cancer community. This empathy game design has an integrated tracking application that offers so much to a child going through cancer.

The application is designed to go through all of the stages of chemotherapy with the child. Q. Ball is a lot like a Tamagotchi in the fact that you have to care for him. As the child interacts with his companion it tracks the activities giving their oncology nurses a window into their life when the nurses can’t be there.

I began this design by creating character sketches. I originally thought that I wanted to create a 2D application but the hard lines with the cartoons gave the app a much more mature feel. I knew this wasn’t right for Q.Ball. I then decided that I would push the character out into 3D. Starting with the sketch to the right that I drew one night on a napkin I finally figured out the right shape for Q.Ball.