Overview:

The goal was to produce an MVP mobile app service that would help parents build healthy relationships with their children. This team included 9 members with specialities such as UI/UX designer, Content, Visual Designer, Data Science, and Product Manager.

Our Process: The big picture

User research was held in weekly sprints for Phase 1-8. Each week I scheduled parents for interviews/testing features. Due to the time constraints and conditions of COVID-19, all interviews were done in 30 minutes over Zoom. Wireframes, script writing, and prototyping were built in 3 days, testing was done at the end of the week. From phase 4-8 we iterated on low-fi wireframes and made changes to the prototype based on user feedback. In total I interviewed 27 users over the course of 11 weeks.

User Research: Phases 1-8

Lessons Learned:

By the end of phase 6 I learned by focusing on 1 feature to test, it saved us time with users, and gave the UX team richer data to synthesize and improve MVP features.

Phase 1: Parent/Expert Need Finding

Research began with empathy. In the first 2 weeks, our goal was to find needs, wants, and prevalent pain points from users. We collectively held over 11 interviews. I sent out quantitative surveys and interviewed 5 parents and 2 experts to find common pain points and frustrations of parents.

Due to the sensitive nature of the material I am unable to show deliverables.

Phase 2: Card Sorting Activity

Based on our quantitative survey and phase 1 interview findings, I had users rank these pain points/frustrations from most to less prevalent.

Crazy 8’s brainstorming with the team

After presenting our synthesize for Phase 2, we held a team meeting were each member did a round of crazy 8’s to brainstorm ideas of possible features to build.

Phase 3: Storyboard Interviews

Before I started building wireframes, I tested our hypothesis to see if parents would use our coaching service

Questions from the qualitative script:

1. What the first thing that comes to mind when you see this scenario?

2. What type of content would you want to see here?

3. What would you expect from a coach/expert?

   • What qualifications are important to you?

What I learned from this storyboard scenario:

• User’s have seen this situation before, either with their own child and other friends who are parents.

• User’s want a coach they can trust and feel connected with.

• User’s want activities with the coach guiding them and keeping them accountable through SMS messaging.

Phase 4: Low-Fi Wireframes

(Some sensitive information has been blurred out)

Questions from the qualitative script:

1. What did the user expect to see here?

2. Any important topics we missed?

3. What do you like about this community feature?

4. What’s most important to you when chatting with a coach?

What I learned from testing these features:

• User’s prefer to search, or read articles first before reaching out to coaches.

• User's like having the SMS option to chat with their coach.

• User’s really responded to the community feature. Other resources such as facebook parenting groups tend to lack organization, and are not always helpful.

Changes made over time:

• Originally I had a swipe left action for the articles on the home page. I changed this to a listing view to give more information about article read time and bookmark option for the user.

• I brought the CTA for coach chat to the main view for user that need or want immediate assistance.

• At one point I considered a chatbot icon on the home screen, however, after testing I realized parents either wanted to view articles or chat with a coach so I changed CTA to the home page to direct the user to coach bio page listing all options. This way users had the choice between coaches.

MVP is launching soon… stay tuned!

Future Steps

Community Feature

The community feature was high in demand, but because this project was in the early stages we didn’t have enough users signed up for our launch date. We put a CTA on the landing page to “join our community” and created a tab on the navigation bar for future development.

Lessons Learned

Don’t reinvent the wheel

In early stages of low-fi wireframing I realized I wasn’t utilizing my UX resources enough. I could have saved more time if I would have looked at what competitors were doing on their service to see if anything could be applied to our MVP.

Focus on one feature at a time for testing

Due to COVID-19, there was limited time to interview parents. Since interviews had to be 30 minutes max, focusing on one feature per sprint I was able to get more valuable data and also make decisions quicker. This is how I came up with the idea for the chatbot in the chat feature. I realized a coach wasn’t always going to be available and a user might need assistance right away. Adding this to the feature helped to round out the service and give value to users.

Gathering recruitments take times

Finding users to interview took more time and organization than we realized. For the next round of research I would recommend appointing one teammate to gather leads and schedule. This will free up time for UX to focus on writing scripts and building wireframes and testing.

Collaboration is key

In the beginning of this project, as a team, everyone was getting used to their position and the scope of the project. It took about a month for the team to reach out and cross collaborate within disciplines. As a designer, I love to talk through my ideas with other teammates. I really appreciated my 1:1’s with other disciplines. Getting to see what they were up to on a weekly basis helped me step outside my work for that week and see the bigger picture.