DADA is a responsive web app, which aims to support fathers on their parenting journey.
My Role: Design Lead, UX Researcher, Product Manager
Timeline: July 2020 - February 2021
Team: Abegail Cariaso (UX Designer), Denae Nelson (Illustrator and UI Designer), Florian Boelter (UX/UI Designer) and the mighty development team at Nology.io
Context
Fathers play an incredibly important role in their children’s cognitive and social development. Yet, while dads’ involvement in everyday parenting has been steadily increasing, most parenting resources are still being designed with moms in mind. Guided by my own parenting experiences and numerous conversations with dads in my network, I decided to design a solution: a practical tool empowering fathers to parent with confidence and competence.
Problem
Many busy fathers don't invest enough time in developing parenting skills, which may result in feelings of frustration and helplessness when dealing with their kids.
Proposed Solution
A mobile app which provides daily bite-sized parenting tips and guides, exposing dads to a range of parenting techniques, and designed to fit their lifestyle.
Process
Discovery
I started by crafting a survey to collect data about dads’ general views on parenting and their information consumption habits. Then, I interviewed 7 dads with kids aged between 0 and 5 about their frustrations and behaviors around parenting. What emerged can be loosely described using BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model:
In other words, the men I interviewed were highly motivated to have quality interactions with their kids and were presented with effective triggers. However, their ability to proactively resolve parenting issues wasn’t always on par, resulting in feelings of helplessness, anger and guilt.
Findings & Key Insights
Beginnings of an affinity map
Attitudes and behaviors
Fathers across continents report similar frustrations and lack of parenting resources designed to fit their lifestyle and learning style.
Success at parenting makes dads feel amazing - not just as parents, but as romantic partners too.
“I feel like a superman, I feel attractive, I feel like a great mate.” - Phillip, 34, Phoenix
When looking for solutions, fathers like look for short, specific, easy-to-skim information
“Just give me the cliff-notes!” - Martin, 43, San-Francisco
5 out of 7 fathers I interviewed said they’d experienced indecision and guilt over their parenting methods in the previous 24 hours.
Content Needs
93% of respondents (56 respondents) claim they could use more ideas for entertaining their kids.
Google and YouTube are the primary sources of information when looking for solutions to parenting dilemmas
Dads in this user group trust and respect books but rarely have the time to read them
Who Were We Designing For?
I developed a few more assets - including a user persona and an empathy map - to aggregate the research findings and better understand the target user group. There are strong indications that further user segmentation is required, but due to time constraints I’ve decided to focus on the most promising user category from the business standpoint.
User Persona - James
Empathy Map - James
Ideation & Design
I took the project from inception to a mid-fidelity mobile prototype by myself, having developed the key user flows, layouts, logo and typography. That’s when it caught the eye of Nology - a software development school based in Bristol, UK. Their trainee developers voted to bring my product concept to life over 4 weeks.
With a looming dev handoff deadline, I now needed to quickly flesh out the app’s UI. Fortunately, Abby, Denae and Florian stepped in just in time and helped me refine the visuals, develop awesome penguin illustrations and translate mobile screens into tablet and desktop breakpoints.
We tested with users every few days, deploying a mix of user interviews and preference testing. This helped us get important feedback and make revisions along the way.
For the purposes of the MVP, we focused on 4 key content categories, which, based on research findings, the target users seemed especially interested in:
Easy and budget-friendly activity ideas
Science-based solutions to most common behavior issues
Cliff-notes from top parenting books
Slightly longer magazine-style articles exploring a wider variety of subjects
Evolution of the Home screen
Keeping in mind that dads tend to scan information and prefer shorter content, we wanted to keep text to a minimum, sometimes limiting the article length to a single screen and including reading time estimates wherever possible.
Content-based sections - short and sweet
Responsive Design
The app’s primary use context is “on the go”, so we prioritized mobile and tablet breakpoints during design and development. However, Florian did a great job translating the screens into desktop view as well. Below are some page snippets.
Tablet breakpoints
Sign Up screen
Responsive landing page
Next Steps
Working under strict time constraints, we have developed the key user flows, including access to various types of content, as well as registration and onboarding functions. The prototype will now undergo extensive user testing with the next development phase to begin in early 2021. It will prioritize the search function and an algorithm to serve users content in accordance with their child’s age. Other personalization techniques and a few usability fixes are also in the pipeline.