MyEarlyLearner — Connecting the dots for new parents
By: Ryan Quigtar
Tags: Early Childhood Education, Parenting Toddlers, Parenting Advice, UX, Parenting

Expecting a child triggers many thoughts and feelings. Using the interviews, I was able to map out the parents journey and their feelings (see image above). By plotting the findings from the interviews, I was able to categorize the journey and use this mapping to identify opportunities that MyEarlyLearner might be able to fulfill. Going forward in the design process, I needed to focus on:

Being able to search and have a list of different media results related to that topic Building community for new parents to share experiences and understand they are not alone in their journey.

Trust the process! Putting ideas into a design.

Now that opportunities have been identified and we understand more about the user, our next step was to understand the competition. Examining what already exists in the early learning and parent support landscape will help us understand how to design a new app and build on what has worked and redesign what hasn’t. I brokedown 4 competitors and the features of their app and website to see how MyEarlyLearner might be able to incorporate and meet the needs of our users.

Vroom and GlowBaby were the two related to the topic of early learning and parent support. I wanted to incorporate activities and having a catered feed for users to find the information they need. Pinterest and WebMD were the non-related apps I reviewed and wanted to incorporate the self-selecting interests of the users to personalize their feed and the ability to save content so they can go back to it later or share with others

Glow Baby inspiration

Vroom Inspiration

Sketching out your ideas and vision really help imagine what the app will start to look like. This process allows you to mock up many different options of what each page will look like and imagine the user’s task flow. That is, determining the steps the user will take to complete a task within the app. Is it efficient? Are there any barriers? What is being left out?

Drawing out your user task flow and layering it with your sketches will help you make improvements before going further in the process. Staying true to your user journey and pulling out any information from your user research will serve you well here.

User Task Flow

Wireframing & Prototyping

Understanding the types of tasks users will be performing in the app and deciding on a design that will allow the appropriate features to be included, wireframes were created to turn the sketches into a real design.

Wireframe mock-up

Using the wireframes, we used a prototyping platform, Invision, to build in simple links of our app. We were able to incorporate all of the research and design we’ve done through this step.

Click here to try MyEarlyLearner

Usability Tests

Once I finalized the links and connected each wireframe to each other, it was time to let a potential user test whether app enables them to perform the tasks it was designed for. I tested with 3 potential users and 1 of them was also a participant in my user research. I developed a research plan with a script for the tests and had 2 tasks for them to complete.

The tasks were based on the user research and tested whether each page guided them to make the right decisions without instructors from me.

Research Plan

My main findings for the usability tests were:

Consistency is key. Limit the amount of times a user has to think by keeping consistency with button type and location. Use more text to briefly explain a task so there is no assumptions are made and to limit mistakes.

Next Steps

This process has really helped me understand the design process and I think new parents and caregivers will be able to find the information they need to help their children become successful. There are a few things I would like to do moving forward:

More usability testing — this will flush out additional features needed and also anticipate any needs that may not have come up in my initial research. More Competitive teardowns — Understanding the landscape of apps in early learning and parent support will lead to longer sustainability of MyEarlyLearner.

Parents and caregivers can never have enough support for themselves and their early learner. I hope this app helps to fill the information gap for new parents and results in more students becoming successful in the long term!