The goal for this project was to create an app that provides free resources and education to young new parents. It was also top priority to solve the pain points parents experience when learning to care for children for the first time. This app was a personal project I completed from the Sharpen Generator.
I created a plan for my design process, going through the design cycle beginning with the define/emphasis phase of looking at the pain points new parents have, then conducting research on what parenting apps and resources exist, creating the design deliverables for the responsive website and mobile app, and finally conducting user testing and iterating on the product. I had one month to complete this project so each phase would take about one week each.
I did competitive analysis of what parenting resources are available online for first-time parents and see what kind of free education they were providing. I discovered that while there were quite a few free education resources, a lot of them didn't have dedicated mobile apps and some did not offer mobile versions at all. It was also difficult to navigate and find resources on some of the websites.
I also looked at other non-parenting education apps such as Headspace and Duolingo to evaluate what kinds of ways they were presenting their educational resources. Many of them had short quizzes and videos as part of courses for users to compete. They also often allowed users to add friends and participate in a social aspect of learning.
I interviewed five target users, people between the ages of 20-60 who have had children or are planning to have children. Participants were asked about their experience learning to raise children and what would have made the process easier for them. Users responded as following when asked about the difficulties they encountered:
I discovered that there were consistent pain points that existed across many user interviews. Such as:
I created a user persona to represent an average user for the parenting education site/app. Our persona, Myles, has the goal to learn more about healthy parenting to raise his child, but has a very busy schedule and issue being interrupted often. He needs a mobile app he can use to watch videos while on break at work.
I created a user journey map for persona, Myles, in completing the task of trying to watch short parenting videos while on break at his serving job. The ability for him to be able to pause his video to resume later - and return to work - allowed him to save his spot in the video he was watching.
I created a big picture storyboard for Myles, illustrating him starting up the videos when work is slow. He is able to save his spot in the video to return to later.
I created sketches for the home page of the parenting education app. It was a high priority to include features like what videos were new today, popular, recommended, quick watches, etc. I also wanted to include top navigation with a user account and search bar, and a bottom navigation that directed to different topics of parenting.
The first digital wireframes of the parenting responsive website home pages for desktop and mobile. Users are able to see recommended, recent, and favorite pieces of article or video content immediately on the home page. They are also able to navigate different subjects and search for content.
Last image is of the mobile app's content library page. Users are able to filter content from libraries into categories like "under 5 minutes", "videos", and "toddler". This will allow users to search for content that is relevant to their needs.
I created a low fidelity prototype in Adobe XD to show the basic navigation and function of the app/site. The app version allows users to add friends and look at their course progress and completed quizzes. All versions allow users to favorite content and visit it later.
I created a high fidelity prototype of the app. This version allows users to add friends and compare courses and badges.
I also created a mobile prototype of the responsive website. This version does not allow users to add friends but does contain the ability to donate to the cause of funding first time parenting education and resources.
The high fidelity desktop prototype of the website. This functions the same as the mobile website.
One remote, unmoderated usability studies was conducted for Hummingbird’s during the low fidelity prototype phase. Participants were parents age 20 - 40.
After completing user testing, some themes became apparent:
High fidelity mockups of the final design for the course, favorites, and video pages. The favorites section should allow parents to save videos and articles to view later if they are interrupted.
Final product images for Hummingbird, an education and resources service for first time parents. Logo illustrated by me with Apple Procreate. Users, such as Myles, should be able to benefit from the ability to search for parenting content with filters and favorite the content to interact with later.
