The Fam App
A solution to make efficient communication between parents and children during the pandemic time.
At a Glance
COVID regulations have limited the activities that family members can interact with each other outside their household which may lead to harder communication. This project provides a solution that makes the communication between parents and children more efficient during this pandemic time.
Project Team
Mingyue Weng
Kayleen Garcia
Ploy Pruekcharoen
What I did
User Research
Survey
User Interviews
Personas
User Journey Map
Storyboards
Information Architechture
Prototyping
Duration
January 2021 - March 2021
Problem Statement
Middle aged parents have suffered physically, emotionally, and financially effect from COVID pandemic. Mental problems can affect relationships within family members. Financial stress from parents leads to a lack of communication with their children and things start breaking down very quickly. We want to build a solution that targets and alleviates specific problems that this demographic faces.
The Fam App
Make the communication between your family more efficient
Create a Family
Create a family code for each family member to join and share information. Build up a family community.
Manage Family To-do List
Add and change your own to-do list and see other family members' to-do lists. Sharing your life with family.
Check Mood & Status
Update your mood and status and share your mood flow either other family members. See other family members' mood flow. Share emotions among the family.
Schedule Family Time
Check on other family members' schedules. Schedule events for yourself and schedule the most convenient family time. Make family time easier.
Listen to Family Playlist
Create, add, and listen to the family playlist. Share interest among the family, create commonality and know more about other family members.
Link to Home Devices
Link your device to the application, to receive notifications and listen to the family playlist more easily.
Feel free to play with the app!
Research Question
How might we help parents to increase communication with their children and encourage family members to share with each other?
Design Requirements
1. Inform family members how the user is currently feeling.
2. Reduce stress levels of not having to guess when the right time comes along to talk about something deep/personal.
3. Schedule the most effective time for all members to gather and converse.
4. Collect users’ song selections to create family mood playlists and interact as a family.
5. Track users’ feelings throughout the day or week based on the color or contexts they choose to interact with on the app.
Findings
Interview + Survey
Sensitive topics
Parents want their kids to talk more about personal situations, such as body change, relationships, gender, etc, but the kids unlikely to share.
“The problem is that they are shy to talk about sensitive topics such as sexuality stuff with parents.”
Time commitment
When parents are busy or kids are at school, the time for communication is limited, parents and kids are not aware of each other's routine.
“I Work Monday to Friday outside the home, kids in the home all day with no supervision, sometimes I don't know what they are doing when I am outside the house ”
Common interests
Participants expressed that the parents and the children sometimes don't know what each other's interests are.
“Sometimes it is hard to find a movie me and my kids both like.”
Excessive time on technology
Participants mentioned that their kids would rather spend more time communicating on technology than talking in person.
“The kids spend more time with technology, they are learning to communicate with technology and electronics. Communicating more with peers and friends, but not within the family.”
Personas
Storyboards
Limitation & Reflection
Due to COVID, our user interviews had to be conducted remotely via video call, making it a little harder to read body language and get the full user interview experience. If we had more time, we would’ve really enjoyed doing more user interviews and get more than three responses to help our research.
Our team did very well managing time and deadlines, getting all notes and information on time to keep moving forward on the design process. Communication was always clear, video calls after class were essential to keep ourselves on track and work together remotely.
Get in Touch
Interested in learning more about me, my work or how we can collaborate on an upcoming project? Feel free to reach out anytime, I would be more than happy to chat.
4751 12th ave NE, Apt H-209, Seattle, WA 98105
206-612-9808