Nests
Duration
2019.10 - 2019.12
Team
Wonil Choi, Nicholas Glaser,
Max Hu, Solomon Henry Roh
Max Hu, Solomon Henry Roh
Tools
Figma, Sketch, ProtoPie
My Role
UX/UI Design, UX Research
about the project
What is Nests?
Nests is a sharing and learning app created for parents to help and support each other. With Nests, parents can find practical and educational information, share their difficulties or frustrations in parenting, and document their parenting journey.
My Contributions
As a UX/UI Designer, I helped to brainstorm, ideate, and wireframe our core features. I proposed and advocated for the Journal feature that aims to improve novice parents' mental health. And as a UX researcher, I conducted user interviews and other related research. After the group project, I independently made improvements to the UI and interaction design.
user research
Parenting is stressful.
Imagine being a novice parent with your first child. You thought you are ready to be a parent after all the parenting books, but you still have tons of questions with no answers. You're constantly tired and questioning if you are doing the right thing. You want the best for your child, but you're not sure what the best is.
During secondary research, we learned how stressful parenting could be, what the stress factors are, and how parents' stress levels can affect children's development. We realized that new parents who lack experience are in constant need of reliable information and reassurance of their parenting knowledge.
We decided to focus our primary research on novice parents and create an educational platform on parenting.
293 Survey Responses
6 Interviews
41%
had under 6 years of parenting experience
36.8%
had children under the age of 2
Over 50%
rated their stress level as 4/6 or above
Read the quotes
Core Insights
#1
Novice parents are much more likely to take advice from people they trust, like friends, families, or pediatricians.
#2
Novice parents don't lack general knowledge but lack personalized or practical information that applies to their situations.
#3
It's easy for novice parents to have self-doubt. They often need a space to talk, reflect, and feel reassured.
Defining Our Users
We wish to connect inexperienced parents who are seeking to gain more knowledge with experienced parents who are willing to help.
See the Persona
See the Journey Map
Defining Our goals
How might we create a sharing and learning experience for parents in order to alleviate their emotional strain?
Emotional Support
Personal Sharing Space
More Reliable, Accessible, and Engaging Information
Ideation
Taking all the insights we gathered from user research, we decided to design a mobile app that makes educational information easily accessible. A mobile app also allows the user to upload pictures for documentation or queries.
Key Features
The Nest
The Nest is a small group where parents of similar experiences and interests can get together, share, or empathize on a safer and more personal level.
Plaza
Plaza is an open forum with popular posts and expert articles for all Nests users to share, explore, and learn.
Journal
Journal is a private diary for parents to document their parenting journey and their children's growth.
Iterations
Preliminary Sketches
Mid-fidelity Wireframes
Final Design
The Nest
Your personal support group
The Nest is a private support group that consists of 5 to 10 users with similar experiences, interests, or backgrounds. Our research shows that smaller groups can help promote an environment of trust and help form more personal connections among parents who are undergoing similar experiences.
The factors that the system will consider when assigning parents to Nests are:
The factors that the system will consider when assigning parents to Nests are:
Gender
Main interests
Children’s age
Number of children
Most active time
Employment Status
Location
Users can ask questions, voice their frustrations, or share resources. Ideally, each Nest will have at least 2 relatively more experienced parents who can answer questions or concerns posted by others.
If parents can't resolve a question within the Nest, they can choose to push it to a pool of experts for a reliable answer. If a post can be helpful to others or worth more attention, Nest members can choose to push it to Plaza for more Nests users to view.
If parents can't resolve a question within the Nest, they can choose to push it to a pool of experts for a reliable answer. If a post can be helpful to others or worth more attention, Nest members can choose to push it to Plaza for more Nests users to view.
Plaza
A public forum for all your questions
Plaza is where all Nests users can interact with each other and see posts, resources, or discussions that were made public. On Plaza, you can also find product recommendations and expert articles. Every user's feed is customized according to the interests they chose during onboarding and their app activities.
Journal
A private diary to document your growth
Journal is a private documentation feature that parents can use to record their activities, feelings, and growth. The content of one's Journal is entirely private, but one can choose to share a particular entry with their Nest group if they want.
The purpose of Journal is to show parents' progress over time. Our research shows that new parents often need reassurance and reminder that they are doing well on most days. It can be greatly helpful when they are feeling low or having self-doubts.
The purpose of Journal is to show parents' progress over time. Our research shows that new parents often need reassurance and reminder that they are doing well on most days. It can be greatly helpful when they are feeling low or having self-doubts.
Prototyping
Bringing high-fidelity UIs to life
To bring our design to even higher fidelity, we used ProtoPie to simulate interactions with detailed animations.
Click here to experience our Interactive Prototype
next steps
Usability testing & Inclusive design
The current design of our app was based on insights gathered from parents. But there are so many others who might play a role when it comes to parenting. In the future, we need to consider the role of grandparents, babysitters, and those who are expecting but not yet parents. After adding new user groups, we need to conduct more user interviews and research before making design changes.
We need to continue to validate and improve our concepts with user testing. There's also more we can do to build trust with our potential users, which would help our app standout from other similar services. Children's health and growth are extremely important and personal to parents. So how can we create trust between users and the app? Or between Nests users? How do we assure our users that the private information they share is indeed private? We need to continue to modify the details of our design to appear more reliable and trustworthy to users.
We need to continue to validate and improve our concepts with user testing. There's also more we can do to build trust with our potential users, which would help our app standout from other similar services. Children's health and growth are extremely important and personal to parents. So how can we create trust between users and the app? Or between Nests users? How do we assure our users that the private information they share is indeed private? We need to continue to modify the details of our design to appear more reliable and trustworthy to users.
Takeaways
Keeping an open mind on user needs
One of the most important lessons I learned in this project was that it’s perfectly fine to change project directions as it develops. At the beginning of our project, we wanted to design an app for early childhood education. About one week into our initial research on children's development, we discovered that parenting style has a huge impact on children's cognitive development. We then decided an educational platform for new parents is much more needed and interesting than one for children. And to make sure we get accurate responses during our user research, we carefully worded both our survey and our interview questions with help from our professor to make sure our questions are as neutral and inclusive as possible.
Thank you for reading!
