Designing for

childhood.

Beanstalk -

A case study

on play.

Role

User Research, UI Designer, Visual Design, Branding & Interaction Protoyping.

Duration

4 Weeks | 80 Hours

Tools Used

Figma, FigJam, Photoshop, Illustrator, Zoom, Discord, Canva.

Team

Conceptual student project

"To have just 27% of children playing outside today compared to 80% in the past represents a huge change to the nature of childhood experiences."

Helen Dodd, Professor of Child Psychology at University of Exeter

THE PROBLEM

Aggregating Children's Activities

Caregivers are facing a screen epidemic, the pressure to provide activities outside of the home to avoid the use of screens in leisure time is unrelenting. We had a theory that platforms for children's activities are dated, with club websites being poorly designed and difficult to use, often resulting in missed opportunities. With a lack of accessible activities, parents defer to devices as babysitters. Ultimately we wanted to determine if a centralized hub for streamlining this information would be a useful tool for caregivers, and would encourage more engagement for children outside of the home.

The Journey

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Word of mouth through the community is currently the most reliable & preferred way to source new activities.
7/7 interviewees found existing processes for registration frustrating and inconsistent.
7/7 interviewees cited the importance of peer involvement as a motivational factor.
7/7 interviewees are frustrated with current search methods, and wish there was a primary hub of information.
7/7 Caregivers expressed concern about the amount of screen time children are exposed to, and cited communal activities as a vital way to keep children connected, and learning healthy social skills.

SECONDARY RESEARCH

We compared 3 other platforms commonly used to find and schedule classes and activities. Outschool, MeetUp, and Eventbrite were chosen. However, it was very challenging to find a platform that catered solely to Children’s activities, Outschool being the only one, and Outschool’s activities are all online classes. The only real sources for aggregating this information tend to come from social media like Facebook groups and instagram. This was confirmation in itself that there is a gap in the marketplace.

EMPATHIZE

Based our our interview subjects, we created three personas with varying parenting styles, demographics, economical backgrounds, and available resources. Using the personas we were able to visualize the pain points and needs with some simple storyboards, and to get an idea of how a product might solve their problems.

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DEFINE

How might we streamline the process of finding and registering for clubs?
How might we establish a community centered around children’s growth and play?
How might we encourage club enrollment opportunities for children to reduce the involvement of screens in children’s leisure time?
How might we give visibility to peer attendance to promote motivation?

DEVELOP

After defining the problem, we began sketching the information architecture, with LowFi Wireframes, plotting task Flows, and conducting a card sort we were able to start understanding the journeys a user might take, and the product began taking shape.

DESIGN & TEST

Using Figma we built high fidelity wireframes, and added prototype functionality to bring the platform to life in preparation for usability testing.

3 User Journeys were designed for testing, and 5 test subjects were observed and recorded via zoom. The 3 task flows were to sign up and create an account, search and find a club, add to favorites, and register for a drop in class.

We sorted test results and quotes into 4 groups, and then looked for patterns and clusters. By distinguishing the frequency and severity of an issue we could determine the updates for the next iterations.

What Worked?

User Questions

Needs to Change

User Ideas

Iterate & Deliver

LANDING PAGE ITERATIONS

5/5 Participants completed all 3 tasks easily, however there were some core issues with functionality and design.
Landing page messaging felt unclear, and it was mentioned there were missed opportunities for branding.
In V2 the name and branding were prioritized in the hero section, and below a clear description of features of the platform was outlined. The CTA funneling was simplified to just one action and moved into the hero section for more visibility. The intent being to get users to sign up and move into the platform quickly.

SIGN UP / ACCOUNT CREATION

In the first version (not pictured) Creating an account seemed blended with credentialing and profile creation. During the tests participants often hesitated at this part of the flow.
In V2 (pictured here) the task was separated into 2 routes, one where you can choose to build an in depth profile, or you can choose to bypass this step and begin browsing immediately. the intent here is to maximize engagement.

CLUB PROFILE ITERATIONS

5/5 participants cited that visibility to other attendees avatars was a great feature, and it should be more prominent, in V2 we moved this into the hero section of the profile.
2 test participants mentioned that they would prefer to have the visibility to the booking options in the main page, in V1 (below the fold) a CTA took you to booking information on a separate page. In V2 we prioritized booking info in the hierarchy to get users to sign up for activities quicker.

EXPLORE PAGE ITERATING

A recurring comment about explore page in V1 was that the UI copy wasn’t setting expectations. Frequently I was asked ‘what am I searching for’ In V2 we made it very clear what this page was about, and what the user would be searching for.
We also added speech function in the search bar for greater accessibility.
We made sure the content was more enticing and personal to the user and their location.
We added more metadata about the activity to the class cards, as well as adding avatars of attendees for extra motivation to sign up.

Conclusion

Our research has uncovered the need for a product that helps to streamline the process of organizing children’s leisure time, and aggregating the information.
On reflection I would like to explore how we might design a product that considers not only parents and caregivers as users, but also the club organizers.
The concept of Beanstalk was well received in the research subjects, and online communities where we presented our findings.
In another version I would look into what building out a full ‘family profile’ would like like, to add functionality to families with multiple children. Being able to tailor searches and schedules per child would be a useful feature.
And finally, more research into how we could track and reward time spent away from screens could be another rich piece to add to this platform.