FAMILY EMAIL APP
Unifying Family Responses to Life’s Responsibilities
Overview:
Our Client, Jenny Zhang (JZ), is starting an app called: Family Email App. The Family Email App was based on the idea that parenting could be made easier by streamlining the channels of communication between family members and the outside world. By creating an omni-channel as a central organizing point for family life and an optional, gamified solution for the chores no one wants to claim, Family Email App helps keep families connected.
This app streamlines two points of contact into one. The concept is that there will be one phone number and one email used to alert both parents simultaneously. In the app space, parents will be able to see, communicate, and plan household and family responsibilities. Our deliverables were to take our research and JZ’s wireframes and create a working high-fidelity prototype of her app.
Team: Angela Zeitz, Eun-Hye Rho , Jessica / Jung Min Yoo, Johanna Mendez
Duration: 3-week design sprint
Type of project: Client Project
Client: Jenny Zhang with Family Email App
My Role: My role was primarily the UI designer with an additional focus on content strategy and project management.
Tools and methods:
Company Research
Apple IOS research
Market research
Competitive and Comparative research
User Interview
Affinity Mapping
Synthesis
User Personas
Survey
Journey Mapping
Mood board/ Style Guide
Wireframing
Content strategy
User testing
Usability Evaluation
Survey
Journey Mapping
Mood board/ Style Guide
Wireframing
Content strategy
User testing
Usability Evaluation
2nd re-design based on Usability testing
Design Annotations
Delivering Deliverables
Our Client’s Design Solution
JZ, Our client, believed that creating an app space where a primary contact could be consolidated, and creating a visual statuses of tasks would eliminate the issue of (1) unequal balance of responsibilities and (2) the unawareness of the unequal distribution of tasks. Because this app is a channel for communication, JZ also wanted to create a spinner application to lesson the tension of deciding who does what responsibility.
The problem that the Family Email App was trying to tackle was the issue of responsibilities falling more towards one individual and trying to create a space where tasks could be distributed in an equal and way. When filling out contact forms, choosing who is the primary contact will cause one parent to have the influx of initiating, planning, and delegating tasks. This creates an unequal balance of responsibilities, and also blindsiding the other partner of knowing how much the other is doing to keep the household afloat. Our goal was to do user research and learn about households’ team playing dynamics. From there, using our research, we designed an IOS native app based on our findings and our clients requested redesign of her wireframes.
Our Research
User Interviews & Affinity Mapping
Our Objective: To find household pain points and users’ household dynamics when it came to responsibilities and tasks.
Our Findings:
Users already used calendar applications to organize their daily lives.
There is usually a Primary and Secondary role when it came to household responsibilities.
The Primary parent usually is the person who initiates and plants out tasks.
They are more aware of what needs to be done and are usually the primary point of contact for schools and doctor’s appointments for the children.
The secondary parent usually does the task that they are requested to do.There are tension when it comes to communicating what needs to be done.
Users are wanting an app experience that doesn’t add more to their list of things to do.
Our Conducted Survey
Our Objective: One of our client deliverables was to create and conduct a survey that would find out what features our users wanted in the app. We created the survey to ask user’s preferences in features in regards to planning app platforms, and also asked about household dynamics when it came to responsibilities.
Our Findings:
Solutions based on Flexibility - Responsibilities were accomplished based on who was available and their flexibility.
Most wanted Features:
Calendars (86.1%)
Reminders of (77.8%)
To-do lists (72.2%)
Our Secondary Research
Key takeaways from our Research
Challenges: As we’ve conducted our interviews, surveys, and secondary research we noticed that there were some potential challenges that could come against the introduction of the app Family Email App Concept.
Roles are already established and it’s challenging to change routine - We’ve discovered that even though both parents work, roles in the household are still hard to change. Some of the reasons are due to the fact that one or the other might not know how to fulfill each other’s roles or responsibilities.
The fight between Primary and Secondary Parent struggles - There seems to be a role of a Primary and secondary parent when it comes to household chores. The Primary parent is overloaded with the mental and physical execution of responsibilities. The secondary parent is usually blindsided in regards to how much background work is being done to accomplish the household tasks.
They don’t want another system - Most of our users expressed that they don’t want another system that they would have to keep up with. They didn’t want to migrate the digital lifestyle/ database that they had already established on another platform.
But does that mean that they are Happy? … No
What would make the app effective?
Due to the potential challenges for the Family Email App, we wanted to concentrate on strategies and features that could effectively address these issues. By working with Users’ habits and beliefs, Family Email App can meet users where they’re at, and help them get to where they want to be. From there our solutions would help us ideate design concepts. So how are we going to do that?
Don’t interrupt what they already have. Let’s not re-invent the wheel here, lets try to integrate what people are already using.
We want to make sure the app contains features that users already utilize in their daily life, and reduce the learning curve.
By doing this we did a competitive feature analysis and research to find out how other platforms function.
Another way to help integrate the Family Email App into the users’ lives more seamlessly is to make peoples’ lists of task all in one easy system.
What makes this app stand out? We can’t just carbon copy of what’s out there.
The fact that there is a Consolidated and Primary way of contact for both parents.
There is a Spinner Feature/ option We learned that there were tensions when it comes to communicating responsibilities. There is a unique feature in the app where users could rely on a spinner to assign tasks. This is an fun optional way to reduce pressure of assigning responsibilities
All your alert, reminders, and communications systems in one place.
Ideation and Designs
Because one of our deliverables was to redesign JZ’s wireframes we studied her flows and took elements of her design and married them with the design ideas based on our user research.
Here is JZ’s Task list where all emails, phone calls, and texts would be listed on one page. As JZ requested, she wanted the UI design to be neumorphic. We explored how drop shadows could create visual feedback and statuses to the users. For this app, we learned that it is very important for users to understand the status of certain tasks because the app creates a space where multiple people have to know the status of each given task. The idea is that no call to action task falls through the cracks because of mis-communication. So for example, any task that was read or un-read would be indicated by the drop shadows as if they were on and off buttons. However, at some point JZ decided to go with a flat design instead.
This was our wireframe design of the consolidated phone and email sign up. We wanted to design a place where the UI is more simple and easier to navigate. We explored a cleaner look.
This was our version of the spinner feature. The app itself would notify the users in it’s own communication channel the status of the task. Whether or not a partner has accepted a task via the spinner’s decision. This is another step to ensure that partners know that each task is being taken care of by someone. JZ was very adamant about making sure that the ball doesn’t get dropped when it came to responsibilities.
Content Strategy
Because this app will be a communication channel within a household, how we conduct the app’s tone and content is very important. The point of this app is to reduce friction in the household and we wanted to make sure we don’t cause more friction in anyway. The 3 main product principals that we found would be most helpful based on our user research was : Efficiency, Playfulness, and being Considerate.
Playfulness: Here the spinner app creates an opportunity for users to gamify responsibilities in a fun way. It can help ease the decision factor of who gets what task. A playful element is created and reduces the need to be business-like for every responsibility.
Considerate: The tone of how requests are conducted is important, because it can either create peace or cause friction. So we always want to make sure that members of the household confirm their responsibilities and clearly understand their mission.
Efficient: And in the same vein we found out, through our interviews, that users also deal with tension when it comes to asking their partners to take care of responsibilities. So easing that tension and releasing that moment of hesitation, we are letting the product help aid with decisions instantly.
Usability Testing
After conducting our user testing we discovered users wanted to see 3 things:
“I want to see the task that are not done and need attention.”
“I want to see who is doing a specific task.”
“I want to see simplified product features.”
“I want to see simplified product features.”
Users said that the buttons and options were very overwhelming they did not know what to do. So we simplified the app’s visual UI and options by editing options down to what was needed. Certain buttons or features were either tucked away in other parts of the app like the hamburger menu.
“I want to see the task that are not done and need attention.”
Not only did we simplify the planning pages of the app, We also made sure visual cues and indicators were apparent in regards to task statuses.
“I want to see who is doing a specific task.”
Because there are many tasks involved when it comes to responsibilities, we found out that users wanted visual indicators of who would be involved doing which specific tasks. In response to the users needs we created features where users creating the events and task lists could add and assign household members accordingly.
Our Prototype
Our Proposed Next Steps
We want to make sure we work with the values that users currently hold. Through that process, we believe this will enhance the conversion rate for the Family Email App, and provide a distinct user experience in the market. How do we go about doing this?
Based on the user needs we propose new design systems such as:
Filter & Categorizations
Users want the ability to filter and Categorize tasks and different elements of information for better and flexible organization.
Seamless Transitions
Connecting with already existing personal calendars and systems would help users seamlessly migrate into a new product.
List of tasks and prompts
Ease the cognitive load of parenting and planning through pre-made lists and automated reoccurring event reminders so parents don't have to start from zero with the app.
My Takeaways
The Challenges:
Our group was made up of moms. We are strong women who had to put on their mom hats right after class. We had to Pick up our kids up from school / Daycare. After putting our energy into our love ones, we switched into our UX Designers hats around 9pm, and continued to push through to complete our project. Was it easy? No, not at all. But our determination to do well and accomplish what was needed was proven through our deliverables. We are a force to be reckoned with.
Working with our strengths surprisingly can cause some disconnects. We had some team members who had their strengths in research and some who had strengths in UI. When each department is trying to complete their own tasks to get things done, sometimes we forget to look up and check up on the other side. At times this caused some disconnect from the research to the design. Having the team be on the same page in regards to our findings and understanding how that affected our designs was something we needed to grow in. We eventually realized how important this was.
When working in a group dynamic, navigating through different group personalities will always be a learning curve. Dealing with the layers of mom life, client asks, and group dynamics will challenge anyone. However, putting on your growth-mindset and focusing on what needs to be accomplished helps ease some of the challenges. It’s really about unlearning, and relearning what works and doesn’t work in that specific group and communicating that effectively. I unintentionally carried helpful methods from my previous group project that I realized did not work in this group. That made me realize that I needed to be more conscious about communicating, and be more aware about assumptions that I didn’t realize I had made.
What worked well:
Shout out to General Assembly instructors who emphasize on team dynamics. I’ve never been in a class or an educational system where instructors gave time to unpack team dynamics. Most of the time our feedback in society is usually about the deliverables and the product. Learning about how to operate in a team, this is priceless skill that is relevant to any job and environment. The hard skills can be learned over time through anyone’s career. The soft skills, like having a growth mind-set and being aware of assumptions, is usually based on a person’s decision. I’m grateful for our General Assembly Instructors teaching us these skills.
I had mentioned that working with strengths had it’s surprising disadvantages. However, it does have it’s advantages. Because we were moms with some time limits, our divide and conquer method also worked effectively. This allowed us to tackle huge tasks through out our design process and manage our time appropriately
Reminding ourselves about the goals and deliverables. Clients will go through their own process of figuring their brand and their product. That can take a time and energy toll on designers. But, we as a team did a great job of trying to focus and communicate what are agreed scope and deliverables were to our client, JZ. That helped us manage our tasks and designs within the 3 week design sprint.