Flutter will use music to help teens deal with grief.

Flutter is a new app that is being designed to give adolescents a tool to help overcome grief over losing a loved one.  While still in development, a team of designers from the Italian educational and research studio, Fabrica, is working to bring flutter to life.

Flutter is an in-development app designed to deal with this very specific problem. Created by Alex Rothera, Ivor Williams, Jacopo Atzori, and Aaron Gillett, the app allows adolescents to make short melodies and save them as artifacts. It’s essentially an aural and visual journal, and its creators hope it will help a younger generation deal with loss by expressing themselves through something other than words. “We wanted to make it possible for someone to say I’m not sure how I feel but I made this to try to understand,” explains Rothera.

Read the full story: A Music-Making App Designed to Help Teens Deal With Death

While not yet commercially available, Flutter has already been shortlisted by the Interactive Design Association for it’s list of 2015 award nominees in the category of “Expression.”

Adolescents often cannot describe their grief, or even articulate with words how they feel. Especially at a young age, there are powerful emotions than cannot be easily verbalized (sic). The possibility of articulating such a unique, complicated event is often very low. As adolescents age, their ability express their emotions grows, but grief challenges this ability at a fundamental level.

Flutter offers a way to externalise, reflect and connect with grief.

Read the full story: Alex Rothera’s Flutter

Rothera is a Philadelphia born designer who previously worked for the Walt Disney Company. Ivor Williams heads up the being and dying research group.

Read more about Flutter in Fast Company Magazine