April 6, 2026
For individuals with autism and their families, navigating social situations, especially new or unpredictable ones, can be difficult. Research led by CREATE faculty member Annuska Zolyomi has shown that families in Panama have used storytelling to help prepare their children with autism for social situations.
Zolyomi’s research, in turn, has led to development of a therapeutic app built off the importance of storytelling in Panamanian culture. Not yet released, the Mystoria app uses what the developers call “social stories” to help individuals practice social encounters and situations, such as getting a haircut or going on an airplane.
Zolyomi emphasized the importance of storytelling in Panamanian culture.
“Social stories help people, especially autistic kids… to just prepare and talk about feelings and the sensory: the noises, the sounds, the textures in a new environment, and also the social interactions.”
– Annuska Zolyomi, CREATE faculty member and Assistant Professor, Computing & Software Systems, UW Bothell
Lessons learned from developing Mystoria
Zolyomi brought on a computer science and software engineering graduate student, Kris Yu, to help develop the app, which the team is aiming to launch in an iOS app format. Undergraduates Adriel Mercado and Kat Xie are also collaborating on the app.
According to Yu, the app integrates large language models (LLMs) to help generate social stories for families. Mystoria is also collaborative, allowing both parents and therapists to work together on the same social story, as well as accessible, with features such as playback rate control and text-to-speech narration.
“Designing for neurodivergent users forced me to think about clarity, simplicity, and predictability in a way that improves the entire app, not just for users with disabilities. I’ll carry this mindset with me into every product that I build.”
– Kris Yu, software engineering graduate student, UW Bothell
Yu also mentioned Mystoria will function similarly to a social media app, with users being able to view and modify other caregivers’ original social stories. He said the process of implementing Zolyomi’s research into a tangible app has been rewarding.
“It forced me to rethink things I [have] taken for granted,” Yu said. “It made me a better designer and a better engineer in every aspect.”
He noted the differences between working on Mystoria and other apps he’s built: in addition to the technical differences in working with a different platform, Mystoria deals with the personal data of children, which requires Yu to prioritize privacy.
Looking forward
Mystoria will continue to go through phases of user study. Zolyomi mentioned that they want to add personalization to the app, so autistic individuals can interact with social stories that are modeled after their own environments. Eventually, the goal is that the app can be released in Spanish and be compatible with Android, which is the most common mobile device in Panama.
Yu said he will continue to work on the app once he graduates and is submitting a simplified version for consideration in Apple’s Swift Student Challenge.
“Long term, I want the app to be adopted by real families, schools, and family practices,” Yu said.
This article is excerpted from TheDaily article, UW Bothell research team develops app to assist individuals with autism and their families, by Mary Andolina.