Habit
Cognitive-based design to influence structured habit formation and skill development in young children.
PROJECT TYPE
Student Assignment
MY ROLE
UX Design
UX Research
UX Writing
TOOLS USED
Figma
AdobeXD
Photoshop
TEAM
Ethan Rutherford
Wei Zhuang
Huang Yuhan
TIMELINE
6 Weeks
ABOUT
HABIT is a smartphone and smartwatch application designed to help children aged 7-11 develop essential skills and habits, while also providing parents with a tool to guide and monitor their children’s progress.
THE PROBLEM
Children today face increasing demands from a rapidly evolving society that requires a diverse set of skills and habits. However, traditional educational methods may not fully engage or prepare them for these challenges. There is a need for innovative solutions that leverage technology in an interactive, educational, and engaging manner to support children’s development, enhance their learning experience, and equip them with the skills necessary to thrive in the modern world.
CHALLENGE
How can we leverage technology in an interactive, educational, and engaging way to enhance children’s development and strengthen their ability to meet the needs and demands of today’s society?
RESEARCH
OPEN QUESTIONS
Before starting our secondary research, we developed four open-ended questions that we aimed to answer. This approach helped us maintain a focused, comprehensive, and insightful research process.
1.
Which life skills do parents consider most beneficial for their children’s development?
2.
How long will it take for a child to establish a lifelong habit using our product?
3.
How can our product encourage children to independently develop positive habits?
4.
How can we ensure that our product effectively meets the needs of our target users?
LITERATURE REVIEW
We conducted comprehensive secondary research to gain a deeper understanding of the most appropriate skills for our target user group, the process of habit formation in young children, and the most suitable age range to focus on.
Skills
Existing literature indicates that teaching children essential skills from an early age helps them internalise these abilities, paving the way for lifelong success. The following skills are identified by research as particularly beneficial for children.
Habit Formation
Studies have shown that rewards have a positive effect on children’s habits such as healthy eating and exercise. According to neuroscience research, these habits are formed through the process of chunking, which occurs when the brain converts a series of actions into an automatic routine. Research has condensed habit formation into a four-step process, which we used to inform our design.
The Users
According to several studies, children aged 7-11, referred to as Key Stage 2, are particularly receptive to learning essential life skills and habits that enhance their ability to meet the demands of today’s society. This is due to the following reasons.
Middle childhood is a key period in a child’s development where complex behavioural and cognitive abilities become possible.
Adolescence is a period when children begin to recognise the value of life skills.
DESIGN PROCESS
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Our next step was to determine the most optimal way to organise the app’s content. Given the varying ideas within our team, we conducted two card-sorting activities with family members who fit our target user group. Based on these activities, we developed a sitemap that reflected the predominant content organisation preferences.
LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
We started by sketching low-fidelity prototypes on paper, then created them using Figma. We then tested the mobile application prototype with 15 parents of children aged 7 to 11 years old.
We conducted our usability test remotely using the Maze website. We asked parents to complete a series of tasks, and the results were as follows.
Task 1 - Add a profile for your child.
86.7% of participants were directly of indirectly successful.
Average duration: 23.7 seconds.
Task 2 - Add a task for your child.
50% of participants were directly of indirectly successful.
Average duration: 17.1 seconds.
Task 3 - Add a new skill for your child.
56.3% of participants were directly of indirectly successful.
Average duration: 8.6 seconds.
Task 4 - Check money records.
68.2% of participants were directly of indirectly successful.
Average duration: 7.6 seconds.
Because the vast majority of parents struggled with tasks 2 and 3, we made the following changes.
Task 2 - Moved ‘add button’ to a more obvious position.
Task 3 - Provided another path for parents to add a new skill for their child.
Although the functionality of the smartwatch app was limited due to its technical feasibility, we agreed that conducting a usability test would be beneficial in determining whether our target demographic could easily navigate our system. A paper-based low-fidelity prototype was crafted and tested with 3 children aged 7, 8, and 9. Users were given three basic tasks, which they all completed successfully.
MID-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Here are the final mid-fidelity wireframes looked like after we addressed the issues raised during our usability test.
HI-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
After a few rounds of iteration, here’s what our final high-fidelity prototypes looked like.
REFLECTION
I had a rewarding experience working as part of a fully remote team on a design project. Although, the nature of remote work provided us with valuable insights, it also presented certain challenges and limitations, which are outlined below.
Findings
Remote work requires a slightly different set of skills than in-person. Due to the pandemic, our team was unable to meet or conduct any in-person user research. This was my first time working completely remotely on a project, and I learnt the importance of clear-cut responsibilities, deadlines, and check-ins. I also gained collaborative experience with tools like Miro.
Disadvantages
Testing the low-fidelity prototype on a small number of users may have left some usability issues unaddressed.
Plan
Incorporate emotional design elements and introduce a series of cartoon characters to engage children and encourage them to use our system.
Develop an in-app personalised system that recommends courses tailored to each child’s need.