Herd
Empowered parenthood with community & knowledge
BACKGROUND
At-a-glace
Herd came to life during a group project in the course Interaction Design and Media at Malmö University. During ten weeks me and my group conducted research a societal problem, ideated digital solutions, sketched, created a graphic identity, created wireframes and a prototype, and finally we tested it with four people from our target group. When the course ended, we where left with lots of feedback from testing, and I decided to independently iterate the design further.
Timeline
oktober 2022 - jan 2023
Collaboration
2 team members
My role
UX design
PROBLEM
Not living up to society’s family ideals creates social stigma
In her book Radical Help, Hillary Cottam describes a strong ideal of what a family should look like, do and be - an ideal most people doesn’t recognize as their own situation. This strong ideal creates feelings of shame, exclusion and a feeling of not being like everyone else.
SOLUTION
Empower parenthood with community and knowledge
We decided to create an app where parents can sign up and enter information about themselves and their life situation. Based on that information, the app will recommend groups and media (videos, articles, and podcasts) relevant to these parents.For safety reasons, all users would have to sign in with BankID, but all users can also easily adjust what information is shared with others.
The groups are designated for specific topics and will be recommended only to parents who stated they were interested in those topics. Within the groups, parents can read, discuss, and create posts to ask questions or seek support.
Chats and group chats are also available to enable more heartfelt conversations or to meet new people.
In the media section, parents can educate themselves with content relevant to their situations and interests - all fact-checked by experts.
PROCESS
How we got there
RESEARCH
Diving deeper into the problem
1/3 - Desktop research
We wanted to find out what research already existed on this topic and sated out by conducting desktop research. We read a bunch of articles but, one in particular stood out. The researchers had interviewed 15 parents in Sweden with children under two years old about future digital tools in health care.
What we learned
- Hearing other parents experiences can be supportive and generate motivation.
- Parents turn to the internet if they do not feel they have received the right help from the healthcare system.
- The amount of information on the internet is overwhelming and can contribute to increased anxiety.
2/3 - Interview with a social worker
To deepen our expert perspective we reached out and interviewed a social worker that works with families in Malmö. Our main objective was to figure out what kind of help and support is needed from their perspective.
What we learned
- Problems usually arise, persist or worsen because either because parents aren’t aware of them or don’t know how to handle them
- They might also lack motivation to make any changes and need support and knowledge
3/3 - Diary study
For the users perspective we complied a digital form as a diary-study. The participants were to describe and reflect over their day-to-day life at the end of a day of their choosing. The form was anonymous to create a safer space to open up. We recruited six participants through our social network and various Facebook groups.
What we learned
- Parents feel a lot of worry and shame about not being enough for their children
- Parents experience stress about not having time to prioritize their personal needs such as exercise or alone time
Summary
To end the research phase and to try to define the problem, we summed up what we learned into three main findings.
Findings
- Parents feel a lot of worry and shame about not being enough
- It can be hard to recognize problems or to know how to deal with them
- It’s hard to navigate the information on the internet
Either for their children or for themselves and not living up to social demands.
Parents might lack knowledge, motivation or simply don’t know here to start.
When parents don’t get help from the healthcare system, they turn to the internet. But the amount of information is overwhelming.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
Narrowing it down
How might we connect parents in similar situations and enable them to share stories, seek help, and support each other - to combat the feeling of shame and exclusion?
The parent persona
Building a persona helped us get a clearer vision of who we where designing for. Our persona Malin, was used as a reference for the rest of the process to help us understand how we could help parents like her.
Working with values in design
During the project, we worked with the Values in Design method. For us, this meant identifying and prioritizing important values for the users and then creating concrete design requirements that would support those values.
PROTOTYPING
Bringing the idea to life
TESTING + IMPROVEMENTS
3 major improvements after testing
After conducting usability tests with 3 people from the target group + receiving feedback from our peers and teacher, the course was unfortunately ending. I decided to continue working with this project and the feedback individually and made three major changes.
The color palette
We used color theory and had the value “trust” in mind, we chose the initial color platte. This led to the app being perceived as cold and was compared to medical apps.
After consideration, the app’s main focus should not be seriousness and trust. These values are implied in other ways, by e.g signing up with BankID.
Instead the colors should feel welcoming, and positive to empower parents to get started.
Clearer distinction between features
The pages "groups" and "media" were very similar which created navigational issues. There where three things contributing to this: 1. inconsistent use of colors, 2. inconsistent use of shapes, and 3. lack of content.
The new version uses colors and shapes of different elements in distinct ways. Different types of imagery and buttons also helps differentiate the features:
Easier to save media
The pinned folders on top got a lot of attention and it was not clear what they where. The folders where made for organizing your saved media and make content easier to find. People said they just want to be able to save something quick - organizing comes later.
In the improved version, you can save media with just one click.
Instead of the folder icons stealing the spotlight, the users most recently saved will show on top to allow easier access.
Final screens
Reliable information in the media section
Find community with groups
Connect with peers in the chat
CONCLUSIONS
What I learned
This is the end of a long process of researching, designing, testing, and some more designing. It led me to a project I’m proud or, but still, I believe there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Something I’d want to improve
We struggled a lot with getting in contact with our target group and had to resort to other methods in the meanwhile. While we did end up with useful insights, the process to get there wasn’t very strategic and the results where where time consuming to make sense of.
Biggest learnings
Getting a hold of the taget group is tricker than you think!
Testing felt time consuming, but we definitely would have saved time if we tesed in the wire frame state, and not just in the end.
Spend more time with sketching and exploring in the beginning - the first idea isn’t always the best!
Thanks for reading! :D