Start point

An app to allow kids with developmental difficulties to receive effective online coaching anywhere so they do not get left behind.

Challenge

Finding a way to implement this that would be workable, needed and give the right help. With this as my start point I started to investigate the viability of my initial hypothesis

The findings and other research were used to create two personas. One was an elderly black grandfather guardian in London with a shy grandchild and the other a busy Spanish mother in Berlin with a girl with ADHD in danger of losing their school place. The personas had vivid stories and helped guide the app.

Meet John and Violetta

Problem Statement

Modern families need a way to effectively and quickly resolve complex child development issues, because they are concerned about wait time, complexity, convenience, expertise, price and other reasons where they live.

We will know this to be true when kids gain skills, coping techniques and social competence in an effective and timely way via the app and report this via feedback.

Potential Solution

A child development and education app that coaches and assists parents and kids to resolve or deal with tricky, modern day issues. In the modern age with a whole range of different needs and quickly changing expectations and situations, it will give solid and trustworthy, expert coaching, to a whole range of tricky problems, for the whole spectrum of all different types of parents and kids. There will be videos, and other material outside of live webinars and one-to-one coaching calls.

With the personas created, I then made a user journey to track their trip through the process and find out where there might be issues so I could resolve potential problems before they happened and better their user experience.  

User Journeys of John and Violetta

I looked at what prompted the persona to begin their task, how they know they are finished and what they need to succeed. I mapped out their tasks and the user flow. In addition to these tasks I looked at much more complex flow to reach the end goal of a 10 week issue success.

Sketching, Wireframing and Iterative Design

My previous UX project had been a low fidelity project created with Marvel. This time I moved on to Figma.

I began with low fidelity sketches and and for the Home area explored the use of boxes with images for easy navigation choices and a burger menu, based on the persona John, with few frills and a quick way of reaching the destination.

In Figma I created overlays that moved the menu in from the left on all pages. The mid and initial high fidelity followed through with this.

Each level brought new opportunities for learning and more interesting issues, decisions, solutions, testing, redoing and technical learning. My UI became more complex and I realised that my Persona could just as easily use a clear pictoral bottom bar and even an interesting and clearly signposted carousel.

I sketched with low fidelity sketches in powerpoint but started wireframing digitally with mid fidelity. Some of the prototype iterations can be seen here below by clicking the image.

Preference Test

92% of the 13 respondents preferred the new Splash Screen design with Get Started button text, a purple button and more text about the app. The strongest reason for preference between the 2 different selections was the text description on the page, stated by 62% of respondents followed by 46%

choosing the other two. 0% chose another reason.

This app was designed from the word go to have a diverse and international feel and to be friendly, open and inclusive.

This also includes users who are older guardians like grandparents. It is

deliberately not designed for a millennial exclusive audience. The whole core of this app is neurodiversity and inclusion.

The accessibility information can be found in the accessibility document.

Outcomes and lessons

I was very happy to bring my ideas to life and online.

There were no major changes to the initial idea because I had thought about the viability and structure of it long and hard before starting and planned out the app. I also thought about the organisation, the requirements, the users and how it would all work. The original objective is reflected in the early, middle and final results.

However this was a learning by doing project and new skills and understanding led to new features and UI. I swapped a simple photo grid home page for scroll bar carousels. I taught myself tick box components and UI overlays that slide in. I really enjoyed that and looking at the pros and cons of this method. Through research and experimentation I adopted the font Roboto where I usually use Inter or Calibri for Figma and Powerpoint.

There is a strong time management element in this bootcamp and targets had to be continuously met 3 times a week through the 5 months. I tackled this by submitting Monday, Wednesday, Friday and working Sundays in preparation.

The design elements with Figma were very enjoyable and it was very gratifying to gain and improve skills. By the end of the course I was very confident going in and creating artboards.

I have a very strong research background and it was interesting to see that some stages of the project received strong participation but other tests were harder to recruit people. Feedback is very useful and I also learned to balance it with business and user needs. It's also a great way to see in practice what is not working and to how to quickly fix it.

Some of the biggest surprises were that my most reluctant and critical respondent gave some really great insights that helped. Also how much my peer tests revealed how much people liked a pay as guest idea I had.

Further Development and improvement

For further development I would look at the use of carousels/scroll bars and their success rate. I would also look at longer pictures for the carousels.

Sound searching is also interesting and chatbots. I like the coach search and filter overlays but I am also now interested in tabs for the coach page.

Further content development would be the pages with issue specific video packages for home therapy training, general videos, webinars, forum, information and subject pages.

This is a project that uses a lot of minimalism and white, and my next project will be more colourful.

Journey

My journey to design is somewhat different to other students on this course. I originally studied history and the analysis that goes with that, then moved into tourism and tourism information provision. Followed by several years in the UK civil service and intelligence analysis in Berlin for some very big corporations. I worked in marketing for many years and specialised in research analysis, a perfect combination of my several degrees in analysis, business and information management. I also took several course in website management, editing, content, online marketing etc

By the end of the 2010s I decided to join a team working in web admin, community management and weekly email provision. I did that for several years for a major international school and became the team leader. This was very enjoyable and involved a lot of quick reaction web work, content management and graphics. When the chance arose to take a UX design course I immediately knew that it was a great way for me to add a lot to my skill set and specialise in design. It has been a real eye opener.

I have been able to use my previous research analysis skills to look very deeply at competitor research and my previous postgrad masters experience in interviewing people and getting results to here deal with the different research parts of this project.

I will now be looking to use my skills in a job in UX and online marketing.

Design is something that is really exciting is an opportunity to stretch oneself in all sorts of new directions.