We developed a mobile app to give foster parents easy access to the music mentorship services provided by Kids in a New Groove (KING), an existing non-profit that provides foster children with free instruments and instruction by volunteer musicians. Children in foster care have traumatic backgrounds and special needs that the foster parent takes into consideration every day. Our app will give them much needed support to make sure their children get all the therapeutic benefits of KING's program.
MY ROLEs
Project Manager, UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Coordinated with stakeholders, Conducted exploratory user interviews, collaborated on research synthesis and persona creation, created mid-fi, wireframes, conducted user testing
Duration
3 weeks, May 2020
TEam
David Ciccocioppo, Muriel Saurofim, Hailey Ivy, Isabella Ferranti
Tools
Mirro, Whimsical, Figma, Illustrator, PhotoShop
The Problem
Lack of access to music instruction for those unable to attend in-person lessons because of Covid-19 or any other situation, means that kids in the foster care system will miss out on the enriching and therapeutic benefits of music and mentorship that Kids In a New Groove provides.
The Solution
Develop a mobile app that will serve as an instructional portal and virtual meeting platform for foster parents, their children and their music mentors.
We suspect that the foster parent is the primary facilitator of the lessons, and we made the bold assumption that Foster parents would benefit from a mobile app that gives them access to the mentors and music lessons for the children in their care.
Simply... If we make it easier for the parents, more kids will continue to receive this beloved and valuable service.
Empathize/Research
In order to validate our assumptions, we asked the parents themselves. From here we dove into research specifically targeting parents with children currently enrolled in the KING program with semi structured 1:1 interviews via Zoom, and an online survey.
Research oblectives
- Understand how music is a benefit for foster children
- Understand how families access at-home educational opportunities
- Understand how families with children learning from home organize kids’ activities
These objectives were designed to help us fully empathize with the user, in this case the foster parent. Rather than ask them point blank what they need, we framed our objectives to truly learn what they experience with their kids on a daily basis.
Reasearch Findings
We heard that these parents are busy! Busy with normal parenting responsibilities, but also busy with additional responsibilities required by CPS. It’s like another full time job!
We heard from almost all of the parents about the history of trauma that their children deal with on an ongoing basis and how it affects their behavior and daily life today.
And we heard how important the KING program is to the kids, and how their success brings pride and joy to the parents who often see the kids in their care struggle.
Possible Bias
We felt like we had very good interview respondents that were able to speak freely and give us a lot of valuable and usable insights. One key observation that we would like to point out is that we realize how bias may have come into play in our data. Here’s how…
We were able to get in touch with the Program Director at KING who was very kind and instrumental in getting us contact information for several of our interview subjects. This was a big help because we knew for the research to truly be applicable, we needed to speak with current foster parents whose kids we’re currently enrolled in the program. We are fully aware that some bias might have crept in because the Program Director reached out to the families that she felt would be the most interested and responsive on short notice. These families are probably more involved with their kids, and might have more resources which would allow them to be available to chat. This is just an assumption and worth noting that we considered it, but given the timing we were very happy to take the interviews that were in front of us.
Perhaps the most interesting insight was how aware and considerate of the children's past trauma the parents were. This clearly shows that this sample of parents are very involved in their children’s emotional health.
Our Persona
Jennifer Miller is a 43-year-old full-time foster mom living in Austin. She always puts her kids and their needs above all else and loves how much they enjoy their weekly lessons with KING. She needs an easy way to track communication and lessons with KING while motivating the kids to keep up with practices. She is worried about how they’ll continue lessons while face-to-face instruction is suspended
All of our respondents were pretty amazing people in terms of what they sacrifice for these kids, and how they keep themselves strong through all of the hardships. We feel Jennifer is a great amalgamation of all our respondents.
How might we make it easier for busy foster parents to facilitate Kids in a New Groove’s music mentorship program for their kids when face to face instruction isn’t possible?
Ideation
We rephrased "I like, I wish and what if..." statements directly from the insights from our user interviews. This ensured that the product features borne out by these insights also come from the research itself, and not our own biases or assumptions.
OOPS!
Before we performed a dot voting exercise, we forgot to synthesize the statements into categories, but we were able to make up for this oversight after the fact by allowing everyone in our team to discuss their selections, aggregating similar insights, and aligning on which of those should move on to the feature prioritization matrix.
User Scenario
Our persona, Jennifer, downloads the KING mobile app and is able to log in or register and find each of her kids accounts. Using PW enabled access, each child is able to receive music lessons and interact with their mentors.
Over time the kids build self confidence, a sense of accomplishment, and a greater appreciation for the people in their lives.
Because the app works like many other apps she is familiar with, and includes features like lesson and practice reminders, reward programs and direct communication with the mentors, Jennifer is able to follow the kids progress and keep them engaged with minimal additional effort.
User Goals
- Wants to make sure her kids are able to receive musical instruments, instruction and mentorship from the nonprofit Kids In a New Groove.
- Wants to heal or give them relief from their traumatic backgrounds through music and relationships.
- Wants more time in her busy schedule to be able to spend time with her kids and share in their successes and joy.
Risks & Emotions
- She's concerned that a remote mentorship experience will be less impactful than one-on-one mentorship.
- Although the kids enjoy music overall, they whine and complain every time she reminds them to practice. She would love to be able to avoid that stress on a daily basis.
Prototyping
Using all the insights and data gathered from our research we crafted a task flow to further imagine Jennifer’s experience in greater detail.
After drafting initial lo-fi sketches we prioritized the following features to implement for the initial launch:
- Scheduling and reminders
- Practicing rewards and incentives
- Communication with mentors
In our first wireframes we set out to cover all the basics so we could get a good look at what we were proposing. After some great discussion and critical thinking from the perspective of Jennifer, our user persona, we made improvements by simplifying and stripping away distractions in most areas, while adding valuable content and messaging in others. We ended up with a prototype we were proud of and excited to test!
Usability Testing
Our usability testing plan focussed on the following goals and success criteria:
- Goal: Navigate through login and onboarding to get to the home screen. Success: The User arrives at the Home Screen.
- Goal: Attempt to Join a Lesson. Success: The user has tapped the launch lesson button and closed the alert.
- Goal: Log a practice session. Success: The user views the success screen.
- Goal: Find out more about your child’s mentor. Success: Successfully view the mentor’s bio.
- Contact Instrument Assistance. Success: Contact instrument assistance and request a music stand.
Testing Results
Our testing was extremely successful. In retrospect, we probably could have given less instructions and observed to see how each tester navigated the app entirely on their own. Lesson learned is that the goal of testing shouldn’t be to get the highest score!
Our testers were extremely kind and complementary. Perhaps they were too nice because we didn’t have a lot of critical feedback to prioritize beyond a few bugs, adding a security statement at log-in, and some greater differentiation between the practice and reward screens.
The direction for our hi-fidelity design was to use KING’s existing color pallete and then be sure to keep the look and feel fun and inviting. We were intentional about not overdesigning and leaving plenty of white space, but we also included well placed custom illustrations to help keep the tone upbeat and motivational. We chose to model our design after the iOS guidelines for its clean look and emphasis on accessibility.
Takeaways
Be overly concerned about user bias, in both research and testing, especially when dealing with mission-driven nonprofit organizations. Research participants might really want you to succeed leading to them not being critical enough of your product.
Focus on a select few features based on the user’s needs and execute them really well for launch, then continue to test and add features as time and budget allow.