IOS APPLICATION 2019
Raising Us
Raising Us is a habit and routine building app designed for parents. Our goal is to help parents in building good habits and routines for both themselves and their children so that they may thrive together everyday. Raising Us enables you to prioritize your most meaningful tasks. A scheduled reminder is that little nudge needed to get those small but vital habits established in our children and ourselves. Our curated list of habits is designed to help parents as their families change and grow.
My role
Product strategy · User and competitor research · Low-fidelity sketches · Wireframes and clickable prototypes · Information architecture · Interaction design · Microcopy · High-fidelity designs and asset creation · Usability testing · Product growth and development
Impact
Raising Us was launched in October 2020 and we have received a great response from users. The current retention rate is 67% and the conversion rate is 8.8% (2022).
The Problem
High levels of stress in the parenting domain can lead to parental burnout.
Parental burnout is a condition that has severe consequences for both parents and children. Two main factors have driven the increase in parental burnout:
- Gender roles are no longer traditional. 71.2% of women with children under the age of 18 participated or were looking for work in the U.S. workforce in 2020.
- The advent of the internet and social media has dramatically changed the culture of parenting. ‘Child-centered, time-intensive mothering and fathering are now pervasive’.
These factors combined with the pandemic have resulted in an epidemic of parental burnout as parents try their best to balance their responsibilities.
The Solution
A platform where parents can build good habits for the whole family.
To cope with modern-day parenting we need to begin to prioritize habits for family well-being.
James Clear author of the book, “Atomic Habits” said “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems…Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there.”
What we have created is a platform whereby parents can create a system for their everyday lives by building habits and routines that will help them achieve their goals
Research Goal
As this was a project that was born out of my own need for a tool to manage my parenting goals, I was conscious to not let my own biases make the design decisions. I began my research by exploring the problem space further. I wanted to get a better understanding of how useful my proposed solution to this problem could be. Key research areas that I explored included:
- Gain a deeper understanding of parental burnout and the factors that have an effect on it e.g. socioeconomic, race, geolocation etc.
- Identify needs, constraints and opportunities surrounding parental productivity.
- Understand users’ current uses of technology in providing relief from their pain points.
Research Phases
Phase 1 Exploring the problem space
Research papers
There is extensive research about parental burnout. One research paper that I found particularly insightful was by Patrick Ishizuka. “Findings provide empirical support for what social scientists have hypothesized to be exceptionally high contemporary parenting standards … parents are expected to enrol children in extracurricular activities, participate in children’s play at home, elicit their thoughts and feelings…”
Target Market
Our biggest target market group is millennial mothers. Millennials have spending power unlike any other generation and are also becoming parents looking for technology similar to what they grew up with to solve their parenting problems. “Develop products – including digital ones like apps – that help make Millennial Moms’ lives simpler. They are looking for less complexity in their lives…our findings suggest that Millennial Moms see value in life-managing resources.” Weber Shandwick.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media has become a huge factor of influence for parents not only a source for parenting information but also for validation of products and services. I explored groups and influencers on both Facebook and Instagram.
Surveys
50 potential users were surveyed using Typeform to gain more insight into how people go about dealing with stress and burnout on a daily basis. Some findings include: 100% of participants feel stress or burnout symptoms everyday, 60% of participants do not have a regular habit to relieve symptoms, 70% of participants use a productivity tool to organize their time.
1:1 Interviews
For my user base, I found in-person 1:1 interviews were best for getting authentic feedback. Parents, in general, were less at ease to share their pain points regarding parenting in front of other parents. This in itself highlights the effects high contemporary parenting standards have had on parents’ level of vulnerability.
I interviewed 10 people in person. Interviewees were informed that the session would be recorded. I recorded the interviews so that the conversation could flow without the disruption of taking notes. The interview questions aimed to dive deeper into users’ pain points in relation to what their parenting goals are, how they plan to achieve them and how they fit themselves into these plans.
Users are feeling overwhelmed by their to do list.
“I work, come home and just have time to tick off feeding the kids, homework and then put them to bed. I don't know where the time goes!”
Users need a reminder for building good habits.
“I remember soccer practice because I've paid for it. But I don't remember to read everyday to Amy or practice affirmations or all the other stuff.”
Users find it difficult to prioritize family.
“My kids will 'mess up' and me and my husband will think about it before bed and say 'we really need to work on that'. But then we forget about it in the chaos of our day.”
Research Phases
Phase 2 Evaluating the viability of the product idea
Frame possible solutions
I explored tackling the problem from both a web and app-based solution. I opted for an app primarily because I wanted to harness the power of live reminders.
Competitor analysis
Productivity apps are very popular on the app market. Exploring the market was key for me to see how competitors are creating a unique experience for users and differentiating themselves in the market.
IDEATION
Low to High Fidelity
I started the process with hand-drawn sketches. I find the best way to get started is with paper and pencil. After user testing, I created wireframes using the feedback received. This iterative process continued as I built further on the wireframes and finally created the clickable prototype. Once I had a prototype, I spent more time dogfooding the app and conducting further usability testing.
ITERATIONS
Testing often and early helped create a refined and useful product for our target market.
As mentioned before user testing was key to creating a joyful experience for parents. There are many changes that were made and I have highlighted some of the fundamental ones below:
- Users shared that they felt their favorite and most valued part of the app was the ideas page. I worked on this further to make it more comprehensive.
- After testing I discovered that parents felt the word ‘habit’ building resonated more with the tasks they wanted to do repeatedly for themselves and their children rather than ‘goal’ building.
- The name of the app changed from “Parenting Goals” to “Raising Us”. This was partly due to the fact that we were moving towards a habit builder rather than a goal builder but also because “Raising Us” lends itself better to our mission of reducing burnout in parents. Raising Us believes that when we raise the well-being of parents we raise the well-being of children and in doing so we can profoundly change our communities for the better.
- The user flows were repeatedly refined to create an experience, which was both quick and comprehensive. Instead of extensive onboarding users can start using the app even before adding an e-mail address or family details. In testing, this was the most preferred route to adding habits.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
The IA improves usability and accessibility by focussing on organizing and labeling.
Interaction Design
Creating small moments of ease, celebration and hope were key to the design.
Below are some of the interactions I incorporated to provide this experience:
- Creating visuals for each of the well-being categories provides users with an image of a goal. The illustrations are light-hearted but aid the user in thinking about their current habits or goals related to this category.
- When a habit reminder is scheduled users can opt for a sound notification also. We wanted to choose a sound that would not send the user into a fight or flight response, which some sounds can do. After user testing with a couple of options, we chose a sound that provides enough awareness whilst being pleasing to the ears.
- I incorporated positive feedback to the user when they complete all their habits for the day with a small animation of confetti which gives parents a feeling of victory. Additionally, the statistics page provides encouraging numbers to help keep users motivated.
- Icons are used throughout the app not only to provide visual representation but also to create a visually appealing list of scheduled habits and habit ideas.
Hi-Fidelity Design
Raising Us is available on iOS and coming soon to Android.
UI Design
Raising Us was designed to bring ease and joy to parents and the UI aims to facilitate this.
Raising Us is a moment for parents to feel excited about scheduling the good habits they want to instill in their children and themselves. The UI is clean and simple on a cream background with pops of colour via the icons. The additional colours that were brought into the app for icons are all autumnal shades. These are soothing to the eyes and mimic the feeling of seasonal change thereby being symbolic of what users are trying to achieve while using the app. Blue is the accent colour for the app. I chose blue because it emulates a feeling of trust which is how I want parents to feel when entering the habits they hope to build.
Style guide
Moodboard
This moodboard is inspired by the concept of hygge.
Hygge is a Danish and Norwegian word for a mood of comfort, contentment and well-being. Raising Us attempts to invoke the look and spirit of hygge. If you look at the habit ideas, they are all based on 7 pillars of well-being and promote ‘family time’ and ‘me time’ which are both central to hygge living. The app aims to promote habits and routines which lead to a feeling of connection, love and well-being.
warm
cozy
together
content
intentional
joyful
Illustrations
The illustrations for Raising Us helped in creating depth into the apps message.
The Raising Us mascot is inspired by the ‘u’ in ‘us’. It ties the app’s name to the character and has been useful in creating brand messaging on social media and on the app itself. I also wanted to create a character that was not gender or race-specific. The ‘u’ allows the user to see themselves since it is neutral in identity. The simplicity of the character allows me to quickly create scenes to help illustrate any theme.
WEBSITE AND SOCIAL MEDIA
The Raising Us website follows the same UI as the app and serves to provide further information behind the purpose of the app and the benefit to prospective users. I would like to further drive traffic to the website and in turn the app by building an informative blog related to habit-building for families.
Learning Outcomes
Designing a digital product from start to finish is both challenging and rewarding.
The entire process of creating Raising Us was a rewarding journey. It began with an idea for a solution to deal with a problem I was having and it ended with an app that has helped other families also. It is a very special project which I will continue to work on. The next step for the app is to create a Raising Us “Tools” page. This page will add more valuable content to parents who are looking for digital and non-digital products which will make their lives easier in relation to the habits they are trying to build while further helping us monetize. I am going to be conducting usability testing with our current subscribed users. This will give me further insight into what we can provide in terms of new features and improvements.