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UI/UX Designer
UX Researcher
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6 Weeks
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Figma
Problem
Gaining Understanding
Kids should spend time outdoors with friends, but it gets challenging for them to find their friends outside
In a large housing community with multiple facilities like swimming, basketball, biking, tennis, etc sometimes it's a problem for the kids to anticipate if other kids are out playing and in what part of the community or if they are all playing a certain sport.
Why don't you go play outside?
I don't know if the other kids are out playing right now..
I looked around but did not find my friends..
The tennis court is always busy..
SWARM is a community app that helps locate kids in a specific amenity areas of a community, motivating them to go out
Research
Diving deeper into the problem
Is this really a problem with other parents too ? Are solutions already available ?
While I had encountered the issue first hand, I needed to deepen my understanding and discover how prevalent the issue was to others. I decided to conduct some research to gain more context. My goals were
To design an app where the kids are able to see if there friends are playing outside
To see what part of the community the kids are at without compromising on their privacy
GPS tracker with family is all that was available
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I started looking for competitions , prior research materials , but I couldn't find anything which addressed this problem. The closest thing which I could find was some GPS tracker for families trying to know each other whereabouts
Secondary research
With not much findings from secondary research, I decided to interview a few parents, especially those who go through the pain of having to push their kids to step out and play instead of being glued to the screen all day
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Interview
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General Insights
100%
parents found it challenging to have their kids go out to play
100%
parents mentioned that its difficult to figure out where most of the kids are in a large community
100%
were excited about the app that will motivate kids to step out and also tracks them for their safety
75%
participants wanted to keep their kid's identity private
"What if an outsider tries to join my community in the app to view our kid's activities ?"
Privacy was a key concern
Pain Points
Parents have to force the kids to go out and play
Kids not being able to locate their friends and hence return home
Going to a particular amenity and finding out that it's fully occupied
Define
Synthesizing the research findings
Looking for patterns and insights from our research. Solving the privacy issues were a priority
I started looking at the problem from different perspective along with the insights and patterns from the research. It was important to solve the right problem.
Persona
The research insights helped me define a general persona for this project. I created a persona for both the kid and the parent together as they both play an equal role in this problem
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Ideate
Creating tangible experiences
A phone app, a GPS tracker and the addressing the privacy concerns - all had to come together
I started to design wireframes keeping different devices in mind , how they interact with each other and at the same time keeping it easy and intuitive
Bringing a GPS tracker , watch and a phone experience all in one was quite challenging, so I quickly set out to create a low fidelity wireframe
Wireframes
Early on during the research, it was quite evident that all the parents cared about the privacy of their children. Any we implemented many features to address those concerns
To prevent any outsider from joining the community, all members would get a verification code on their residential address
Kid's activities are shown only when they are in an amenity area
Only the count in each activity area is revealed, keeping the kid's identities private.
Addressing the privacy concerns
Many features were implemented to address the privacy issues
Linking devices with ease
We decided to keep the linking and verification simple and relied on the automated linkages using the codes
Watch linkages and postal verification process, they both followed a similar approach
Prototype
Early on during the research, it was quite evident that all the parents cared about the privacy of their children. Any we implemented many features to address those concerns
Validate
Putting in front of users
Users feedback paid a big role in making the product better.
I built a prototype and gradually worked on improving it based on testing and iterating at multiple stage.
Usability Testing
Once the prototype was ready, I decided to conduct the usability test. I gave the participants a set of tasks and rated their task on a scale of 1-10 and also got feedback from them
​Test Objective
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Test if users can search and join a community
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Test if users are able to create a community and amenities
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See the no. of kids in a particular area at any given point in time
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Are users happy with the identity protection and verification steps?
​Positives
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Users were happy with the ability to see the number of kids playing in the community
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Ability to track the kids
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Happy with the kid's identity protection
​Improvement Scopes and Ideas
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Some users find the post verification time consuming but were happy with the security
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Option of getting an alert when few kids are out in a specific amenity area
Reflections
Embracing feedback
User research and testing played out such an important role in the shaping of this project.
There were few things such as privacy which we didn't even think about it , came out as a big issues for most users.
Secondary research on the established design pattern such as linking of devices to make enrollment safe and easy turned out to be really helpful
Iterations
Throughout the life cycle, many changes were done based on user's feedback
- kids were shown only if they are in certain amenity area
- Parent can see and track their own kid but not others
