Overview
I led a project that secured 2nd place among 700+ teams in a UX national competition. New parents often struggle with emotional management and lack sufficient knowledge about child development, impacting their ability to provide optimal care. Our solution, Sekolah Orang Tua (Parenting School), is a digital platform designed to enhance parental self-efficacy and provide expert-led parenting lessons. The app integrates multiple features to empower parents with the knowledge, resources, and confidence they need to nurture their children effectively
Goals
Help new parents to manage their emotional aspects to deal with children
Help new parents to know the stages of growth and development that their child is undergoing and the appropriate stimulation given according to their child’s age
Summary
New parents need to manage their emotions to be able to nurture and apply better parenting to their children who are still under 6 years (early childhood). The solution we offered is to enhance new parent’s self-efficacy and offer parenting lessons taught directly by experts. We formulated the main features Sekolah Orang Tua (Parenting School). This single application also integrates multiple other features to provide new parents with the information, resources, and support they need to effectively care for their children.
Background
The golden phase of early childhood, from 0 to 6 years old, is a critical period where children undergo rapid growth and can absorb information rapidly. This includes developments in emotional, social, cognitive, language, moral, and motor skills. As the closest figures to the child, parents play an important role in ensuring that their child receives the right stimulation to maximize their potential growth, which will have a significant impact on their future development.
Research
Understand the Problem
We collect information from literature and news, then gather deeper understanding by distributing surveys. By the data from the survey, we found that:
Parenting issues remain a concern and challenge for parents in their daily lives. Parents need updated knowledge and skills to effectively manage their child's growth and development, with many facing difficulties managing their emotions. Awareness of parenting problems is mostly seen among new parents, aged 20-30, with their first child. Mobile phones are commonly used by parents to access the internet for 1-3 hours or 4-6 hours daily
Potential Users Analysis
From previous findings and survey results, we realized that many of the new parents are workers and some of them are full-time moms or dads at home taking care of their children. Therefore, we divide into two groups of users who are our target users. Then we conducted one-on-one interviews with some of the participants.
Primary target user: full-time parents with children aged 0-6 years
Secondary target user: career parents who have children aged 0-6 years
Organizing and Synthesizing Data
Honestly, we were felt overwhelmed with the amount of information that has been collected😅. We categorize it into an affinity diagram and create user persona so that the problem-solving goals become clearer and more focused.
The challenges faced by new parents and the shortage of resources to support them in their parenting journey are the main driving force behind our design process. To address these issues, we will concentrate on the following two problems:
New parents require emotional management, particularly in terms of patience when dealing with their children
New parents must be aware of their child's growth and development stage and provide the appropriate stimulation according to their age
How Might We
How can we help parents manage their emotions while doing parenting?
How can we help parents know the stages of development of their early age children?
Ideate and Decide
We designed the features to be created and drew drawing a sketch of the appearance of the application and its features using Crazy 8's method
Competitor Analysis
We design a user experience journey to address the challenges faced by new parents and provide solutions through the use of our app. This helps us to visualize the potential difficulties and opportunities that may arise during the use of the app.
Solution
To help parents train their emotional skills
For the emotional problems of parents are overcome with Sekolah Orang Tua (parenting school) features. features. We used psychological approach to formulate this solution because two members of this team (including me) have a background in a psychology study, which allows us to ideate self-affirmation activities and increase parents' awareness through today’s mood scale in this feature. We believe that when parents have confidence in their abilities, they will be able to apply better parenting for their children. Not only self-confidence in emotional form but we also want that self-confidence to emerge contextually, therefore in this Sekolah Orang Tua (parenting school) feature we also developed a parenting class that includes teaching parenting sciences on certain specific topics taught by experts
To help parents in gaining knowledge about their child's growth and progress in order to enhance their child's overall development
With our analysis of similar parenting applications, we noticed that most of them offer child development assessments. To incorporate this into our application, we have included an assessment feature, which displays the results in the form of histogram and diagram graphics. The results also include an overall description indicating whether the child's development is within the normal range or not. Additionally, we provide suggestions and stimulation ideas to enhance the child's development based on their age. The feature Milestone Anak provides information on the various stages of child development. While Progress Anakku is a quick assessment to understand the growth and development of the user's child and receive recommendations for stimulation activities to maximize their growth.
High Fidelity and Testing
To streamline the design of user flow and help achieve the goals of the application, we have developed a user flow in the app
Wireframing
High-fidelity Design
Testing
There were 6 participants in the implementation of this user testing. Observations were made and notes were taken on their behavior and comments. The testing was conducted without any interference or guidance, allowing participants to freely express their thoughts. Upon completion of the testing, participants were asked the following questions to gather their feedback:
How do you feel about this app?
Can you describe your experience using the app?
What improvements or suggestions do you have for the app?
School for Parents / Sekolah Orang Tua
Participants failed to notice the details of features such as self-affirmation and parenting class due to a lack of attention to the information button
The mood tracker feature was not easily accessible
Solution
Implement a pop-up explanation that appears automatically when users first access a feature
Offer the mood tracker feature through a pop-up
Milestone / Perkembangan Anak
Experiencing confusion when filling out the child assessment form
Solution
The assessment form is broken down into 7 items per screen
Progress Anakku
Some label designs look like primary buttons so that users are encouraged to press it
Many users are also not familiar with the term
Milestone
Solution
Modify the color and design of the labels to reduce confusion
Change the name of the Milestone feature to Perkembangan Anak
Impact and Lesson Learned
EzParenting was awarded 2nd place out of 700+ national teams in a UX design competition, validating its user-centered approach and innovative value proposition for new parents. The concept gained further recognition and real-world traction through incubation programs like Kewirausahaan Mahasiswa Indonesia and Creative Hub FISIPOL UGM, where the product was refined and tested for market viability
I realized from my experience in designing solutions to the problems our team was highlighting, that testing multiple solutions at once was too overwhelming. I think it would be easier if we were test solutions one by one so we could focus my efforts and resources on a single solution, leading to more thorough testing and a clearer understanding of its effects.
