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Children are generally more protected due to their weaker immunity, so social distancing due to covid-19 limits how they interact and play with their peers. Playground offers an emerging way that allow kids play together even through an app. The content exposed to kids is safe and approved by parents to minimize the risk of becoming addicted to unwanted content. For the current version, we created a vertical prototype by implementing the movie watching feature, and more features are the next steps in our schedule!
With a covid-caused shift to remote school, a growing number of children have been unable to socialize with their friends or play outdoors, leading to feelings of isolation and boredom. Most social media apps are not designed for children and pose challenges related to safety, privacy, and appropriateness of content for this demographic (6-12 years). Video calling apps, while helpful, are not necessarily easy for parents to monitor or for younger children to set-up and use without parental support.
How might we create a virtual platform for kids to socialize with similar-aged friends without online safety hazards?
Due to the social distancing policies during the pandemic, there is a significant reduction in social connections and physical activity for children.
Provide kids with a safe platform to have a good time with their friends and to make new friends who are of a similar age as themselves.
We conducted secondary research due to the limited time. Our research has shown that due to the social distancing policies during the pandemic, there is a significant reduction in social connections and physical activity for children.
As a result, children (6-12 years) are unable to socialize with their peers in-person. On the other hand, the lack of parental control and supervisions on the internet hampers children's ability to freely navigate virtual socialization.
This information was used to identify the need for a child-friendly virtual platform for safe and interactive social experience.
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The primary user persona we focused on is children aged 6-12 years. The key challenge for this group would be a need to socialize virtually while still being able to engage in interactive activities with their friends such as playing games and watching movies. As well, these activities need to be possible in a safe environment that allows for parental supervision as this is a vulnerable demographic that can easily fall prey to cyber bullying, catfishing, and harassment online. Lastly, this persona group needs to have access to content that is age appropriate to avoid mental impressioning that is traumatic, distressing, or overly complex.
The secondary user persona we kept in mind is parents of these children who may want to find a safe and trustworthy platform that can engage and entertain their children without having to worry about virtual danger and constant supervision.
We constructed two user stories based on the social needs of two kids.
Sherry is an outgoing kid who needs a platform to make new friends online because she always attends school online these days and she is the only child in her family. Therefore she feels lonely sometimes.
"As an outgoing girl, I want to be able to make new friends while the school is closed, so that I can have other kids to chat with while staying at home. "
Kevin is a boy that is really into science themed cartoons. He needs a kids-only platform that he could share his thoughts with his peers because his parents won't allow him to use unsupervised social media platforms due to safety concerns of the internet.
"As a cartoon fan, I want a platform that is designed for kids-only, so that I can share my thoughts on cartoons with other kids with my parents' approval."
We created the empathy map and aimed to put the user needs to the front and center. From what they say, what they think, how they act and how they feel, we could better understand what are their actual needs while interact with these kind of apps.
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Mapping Kevin's user journey revealed how helpful it would be for users to have access to a dedicated kid-friendly platform. The goal of this map is watching a movie with a friend.
Reading through the app reviews for our competitors' services allowed us to learn what users like and dislike about similar apps.
Messenger Kids
Grom Social
JusTalk Kids
Limited chance to socialize in-person with same-aged peers.
Lack of similarly aged kids at home. Kids are experiencing loneliness during the pandemic.
The content on existing social media platforms is not always suitable for kids. They pose threats to safety such as cyber bullying, harassment, and catfishing.
Messaging apps have limited entertainment features apart from texting and calling.
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Based on the conducted research, we brainstormed about the type of features we wanted to include in our app while considering user pain points and needs. Due to limited time, we decided to develop a vertical prototype (i.e. more depth and detail for functionality segment, essentially a narrow selection of product features) and focus on the watch movie and chat room at this stage. The safety of the users is our primary concern. Therefore, we implemented many parental control features to ensure kids would navigate in a safe environment.
This product's main features can be divided into 5 categories:
We created a vertical low-fidelity prototype to indicate our app's structure and functions.
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An internal usability test was conducted before moving on to the mid-fidelity prototype. Changes were made to the prototype based on feedback.
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The first change we made was the user flow of the onboarding page. We added a login feature to allow returning users to access the app.
Instead of asking whether the user's role, we placed a note to indicate only adults can unlock the app for the safety reason. The change acts as a error prevention that prevent kids from unlocking the app.
The second change we made was the UI design of text input fields.
We added text input titles next to the input fields because the procedure helps user to recognize the type of information while filling out the fields.
Our vertical mid-fidelity prototype with watch movies with friends feature partly resolves the pain point of not being able to physically hangout with their friends due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There were previously a limited number and quality of apps that offered kids entertaining social opportunities, but our app would allow them to watch movies while talking/discussing the video content synchronously with their friends.
Click here to experience the work.
Inserting graphics to ensure young kids are entertained and engaged in understanding how to use the
app
Using bright colors with enough contrast to enable usage by color-blind individuals
Using simple language that is clear and easy to understand for our target demographic (6-12 years)
