The Inner Child Clinic
An “inner child health checkup” for adults, by children.
The Inner Child Clinic is a participatory wellbeing service that reimagines the health checkup as a playful assessment of an adult’s “inner child health.” Framed as an official clinic, the project invites children to step into the role of experts, using alternative diagnostic tools to assess qualities often suppressed in adulthood - such as imagination, humour, expressiveness and openness to play.
The project functions both as an experiential service and as a reframing of perspective. Society often positions children as individuals whom adults need to teach. But what if, in some ways, they are the ones we need to learn from?
YEAR
2026
TEAM
Tanaya Desai
OVERVIEW
The Inner Child Clinic provides an “inner child health checkup” for adults - led by the real experts: children. At this clinic, adults are assessed by child experts through a series of "highly rigorous" tests.
GIGGLE LENS
The Giggle Lens measures an adult's response to silliness. The child expert holds the device in front of the participant’s face, says a deliberately silly word, such as “poop”, and carefully observes their reaction.
STYLE SCANNER
The Style Scanner evaluates an adult's “fashion sense.” The child expert holds the scanner against the participant’s outfit and rotates a dial to determine whether the outfit is “boring” or “crazy,” based on its colours, patterns, and overall expressiveness.
SOUND SCOPE
The Sound Scope assesses an adult's willingness to make absurd sounds in front of others. The child expert holds the device to their ear and invites the participant to make a fart sound, then checks how many “filters” are needed to block the sound being produced.
WHAT-IF BOX
The What-If Box measures imagination through spontaneous storytelling. The child presents the box and asks open-ended speculative questions such as: “What do you think is inside this box?”
PLAY PRESCRIPTION
Based on these assessments, children diagnose the current condition of an adult’s inner child and may even prescribe playful activities to help nurture and restore it.
A REFRAMING OF PERSPECTIVE
When we think about designing with and for children, we often think about designing toys and games for them. But even this remains adult-centric - it asks children to learn how to play within systems we’ve defined. Instead, we wanted to acknowledge this power imbalance by asking: what if children could teach us how to play? We reframed this through the structure of an official health checkup - inviting children to step in as the experts, and providing their ways of knowing as valuable knowledge for adults.
"INTERNSHIP AS A CHILD"
To develop the project, we immersed ourselves in child-centred perspectives through workshops and an “internship as a child” methodology, where we explored how children interpret abstract concepts such as age, time and imagination. Many of their responses initially appeared silly from an adult perspective, but revealed deeply coherent and alternative ways of understanding the world. These insights became the foundation for the clinic’s diagnostic tools and interactions.
PROTOTYPING
Early prototypes were built to evaluate if children could intuitively understand and operate the tools without adult instruction. Insights gathered from these sessions directly informed the interaction logic, visual language, and functionality of the final experience.