Happy Helper
Helping parents raise independent kids by assigning daily home chores.
Good Habits Start Early!
Solution
Real-life Skills.
Based on the token economy system, Kids learn the value of spending and saving.
Individual Accountability & Responsibility
Empower kids to be independent and reduce family stress
Assign, Track & Manage
All-in-one smart app to keep your house in order without nagging.
To gain a broader understanding of the subject, developing independence in children to succeed in life. I spent a lot of time doing secondary research and exploring relevant existing data like published research studies and articles, blogs, and interviews and I found this fascinating Harvard study.
Competitive Analysis
After researching human behavior psychology, I analyzed popular digital products in the market, and app reviews stated that users were finding it hard to navigate and were overwhelmed by excessive features offered to them.
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User Interviews
My interviewees revealed that habit-building apps could be overwhelming due to information overload, and positive reinforcement is effective in promoting behavioral changes.
I conducted one-to-one research interviews with 6 participants to gain an empathic view of their experiences and daily challenges.
Research questions:
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How are they teaching good habits to their young kids?
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How are they developing independence in children?
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How successful they were in that process. If not, then what were their challenges?
Let's dive into my UX process and how I approached solving the problem, leading to the proposed solution.
This finding highlights the importance of simplifying the user interface and streamlining the user experience in my design.
"One of the longest longitudinal studies of humans ever conducted - the Harvard Grant Study - found that professional success in life comes from having done chores as a kid."
Research
And lastly, I wrote down a How Might We question to frame the problem for the ideation stage.
How might we help parents in raising independent children without the stress of constant reminders?
Proto-Personas
The research made it evident how different users would use the app differently. To cater to this, I developed two user profiles based on their goals and pain points.
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To summarize everything I have learned about my potential users, I created an empathy map and personas to have a clear understanding of their pain points and needs.
Empathy Map & Personas
Future Considerations
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If given the opportunity, I would like to conduct the research in context (in users' natural habitat) rather than remotely to fill in the gaps in my observation.
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Would like to explore the children's side of the UI flows in future.
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Designing for different devices as younger kids are more iPad-friendly than mobiles.
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Low Fidelity Wireframes
Design improvements after Usability Testing
After all these iterations and considering feedback from my users and mentor feedback, I designed the final solution, a minimum viable product that helps parents easily assign and track household chores.
Final Design
Project Learnings
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Prioritize. During the project, I found myself caught up in considering several features at the same time but prioritizing the MVP helped me stay on track and focused.
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Cognitive Empathy develops by talking to users. My favorite part of the design process for this project was listening to parents and observing their perspectives. During my research on human behavior psychology, I read about cognitive empathy and practiced that during my user interview sessions and it really helped me to set my assumptions aside and find patterns.
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Embrace honest feedback. During my user interview sessions, one mother told me that she didn't believe in the reward system as it spoils kids in the long run that caught me off guard, and I even questioned my choice of topic for a minute, but after understanding her belief that chore chart & rewards mean rigid checklist & monetary incentives. I used this information to iterate my design and added a token economy system for teaching delayed gratification.
Parents struggle to foster self-efficacy in children and end up raising dependent, and self-conscious children.
Problem
Parenting is considered one of the most challenging jobs in the world, irrespective of social-cultural differences. As a parent, I noticed that we are constantly looking for ways to build good habits in our children. But this micromanaging behavior can lead to anxiety and behavioral disorders in young children and take a physical and mental toll on parents.
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Insights:
Theme 1: Positive reinforcement
Parents encourage their kids good behavior & independence by complimenting, publicly praising, and rewarding them but often face common parenting challenges, like kids showing tantrums and lack of motivation.
Theme 2: Performance tracker
Busy schedules make it harder for parents to track their kid's performance especially when they are away for work which results in a lack of motivation from both sides.
Theme 3: Continuous verbal prompting
Parents have to remind their kids several times a day to do their chores which mostly ends in arguments or power battles.
After conducting user interviews, and analyzing the gathered data, I was able to categorize the insights into these 3 main themes
Timeline
Sep-Dec 2022 (13 weeks)
Tools
Figma, Sketching, Miro
My Role
As the sole UX designer for the Springboard UX/UI Bootcamp student project, I handled completed design responsibilities from start to finish. This involves conducting in-depth user research, deriving vital insights from data analysis, and crafting wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes. Working closely with mentors, I integrate feedback gathered from usability testing to provide impactful, user-centered solutions.
Conceptualization
Time to ditch the paper chore charts and upgrade to a flexible digital chore chart!
To initiate the ideation process, I focused on constructing the information architecture and developing low-fidelity concepts for primary use cases. Utilizing the Crazy 8's exercise, I prioritized generating several different ideas over their quality during this initial stage.
Throughout a four-week period, I continually iterated on the low-fidelity concepts based on the insights uncovered from my research findings and usability tests. This iterative approach allowed me to refine and enhance the designs, ensuring they effectively addressed the identified user needs.