The Missing Piece That Started It All
It started with a common problem.
Ask any educator-turned-product-designer how their idea came to life, and you’ll probably hear a story about something that just wasn’t working: a tool that almost did the job, but not quite.
For me, that “almost” was a set of standard sound cards.
When I first started teaching literacy intervention, I used what most of us used—plain white cardstock for consonants, colored cardstock for vowels. They were huge—perfect for whole-class instruction—though most of my work was one-on-one. They weren’t laminated, so they were susceptible to visible wear and tear. And when I transitioned to online tutoring just before COVID, their size made them hard to manage on camera.
But as I got to know my students better, I realized something deeper: the cards were missing something crucial.
A Pattern I Couldn't Ignore
Across students, there was a common thread: a lack of written spatial awareness that was getting in the way of mastery. In other words, building muscle memory for legible, uniform handwriting was an ongoing challenge.
Most of my students over the years have had dyslexia, and many also have dysgraphia. When people hear "dyslexia," they tend to think of reading—but the physical act of writing often brings just as many challenges. Spacing, sizing, and letter formation require spatial awareness and muscle memory, and though students could read sounds and write them well when drilling individual graphemes (the written letters), they struggled to place them correctly in the context of a full word or sentence. Their targeted writing practice looked nice, but their homework didn’t. Where was the disconnect?
In older students, I saw it in their typed work, too: skipping punctuation when reading aloud, adding extra spaces between words, or struggling to navigate a dictionary entry online—where does the definition end? Where does the example begin? Where are the synonyms?
Spatial confusion was showing up everywhere. And we needed a solution that supported spatial awareness from the start—in our daily multisensory drills: sound cards, sand tray, blending board, etc.
That’s when I had the thought: I wish these sound cards had lines.
And then I realized: I could make my own.
The First Design Decision
On the cards I had been using, there was no visual cue to show where a letter should sit. No baseline. No midline. Nothing to help a student differentiate a basement letter like g from a tall letter like t. And when letter confusion is already present—as it so often is for students with language-based learning differences—this lack of structure only adds to the overwhelm and results in guessing.
So the very first design decision I made for our Phonics Sound Cards was simple: add handwriting lines. Not as an extra feature, but as the foundation.
I wanted students to see how a letter fits on the line and to internalize that structure each time they practiced. It’s a small shift, but for a struggling learner, it can be a powerful one.
More on the Back
On the reverse side of each initial concept card, I also included both the lowercase and uppercase versions of the letter. Not every student learns both forms at the same time, and I didn’t want that to slow them down. If they need a quick reference, it’s there for you to show them.
Intentional Design, Built to Last
The cards have evolved a lot since those early prototypes—and goodness knows my designer beautifully transformed my original sketches into the vibrant, game-like visuals we have today. Every single detail was thought through and refined with feedback from real sessions. But the handwriting lines were where it all began.
The right visual cue, at the right time, can change everything.
In a world where so much about reading can feel confusing, a little clarity goes a long way.
