👶 Kivel is a start-up tech company that reinforces a neurodivergent community and provides services helpful for neurodivergent children
Overview
Problem Space:
Kivel wanted their 'content section' to be the app's primary function and figure out what kinds and qualities parents need in the content related to neurodivergent children.
Objective
1. To figure out what kinds and qualities potential users need in the content
2. To identify the pain points of parents when searching for information related to neurodivergent children
Research Question
"What qualities do potential users look into when it comes to the media contents related to neurodivergent children?"
“What are the pain points of potential users when they are searching for information related to neurodivergent children?"
1. Define Issue
Goals:
To understand the current state of the company and how it leads to the problem spaceTo use this stage as a guide for designing a primary user researchTo minimize confusion with stakeholders before actually conducting the research
Outcomes:
Identified specific problem space of what stakeholders are trying to examine
2. Primary User Research
Goals:
1. Identify what kinds and qualities in terms of the type of information, length, reliability of the content, etc that potential users would need in content related to neurodivergent children.
2. To figure pain points of the potential users when searching for information related to neurodivergent children
Study design:
- 40-50 minutes of qualitative remotely-moderated in-depth interviews:
- Each interview question was meticulously designed and naturally written in order to induce natural responses from participants
(Because of Covid19, the participants preferred online interviews so decided to conduct IDI via Zoom)
💡 Why in-depth interview?
Since there are so many different types of disorders in neurodivergent children and the symptoms also vary in every child, our team decided to conduct 1:1 in-depth interviews to understand the different situations and context of each interview participant.
- Total of 5 participants
- Parents actively searching for information related to neurodivergent children
- The company did not have enough users and data to track who is actively using their 'content' section, therefore we decided to recruit participants externally.
*All 5 participants share these conditions to ensure that the participants are the best matches with the current users.
3. Data Analysis at a Glance (Intentionally not readable)
Thematic Analysis:
Yellow Level (YL): Grouped the problems into a vertical order that have mutual aspects.
More than two problems that share commonality are labeled as yellow.
Blue Level (BL): Blue level is written down as an expression which represents the problem of each group. The expressions still show aspects the problem.
Pink Level (PL): Grouped the blue level into a pink level which includes the aspects of solutions of the problems listed below.
Green Level (GL): Green level contains the pink level and represented into a higher level of solution.
Dark Green Level: Shows the main goal of the project
"There are lack of guidance of treating neurodivergent children." - U1 (parent of a child with kabuki syndrome)
"I usually got the most useful information from the parents not from the doctors." - U2 (parent of a child with ASD & ADHD)
"The information is too scattered around so that it is hard to get all at once." - U5 (parent of a child with ASD level 2 )
(Collected the repeated answers from the participants)
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I referred to the Blue Level to extract key behavioral variables and mapped each interviewee onto the behavioral variable spectrum. Relative positions between users were considered during the mapping.
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Discerned the behavior pattern (goal, context, attitude) of each participant and grouped participants that share similar patterns.
💡 Key Insights & Results
Created a primary persona and a secondary persona according to the behavior patterns.
Primary Persona: created based on pattern 1 Secondary Persona: created based on pattern 2
📈 Impact
The company had a lack of understanding of their target users and lacked confidence in launching their new features. However, the research outcome helped the stakeholders instill the user's perspective.
Furthermore, this research clarified the direction of revising the 'content section'. According to the design recommendation, the service could
1. Set in-app content categories and tags to reflect parental interests
2. Curating related content in the app based on categories and tags
3. Change UX/UI to deliver content that is highly readable and relevant to your interests
4. Leverage external sources for content diversification (collaboration)
Limitations & Challenges
1. The company and stakeholders were not familiar collaborating with a UX researcher so it was quite challenging in the beginning explaining the role of UX Researcher and what kind of research findings that we can bring to the table as an outcome of conducting user research.
2. It was typically challenging in defining a problem space with the company since they weren't sure that where the user research comes in and where it ends. I shared my projects conducted within the previous start-ups and helped them understand how to prioritize what they want to know from this user research and defining an ultimate problem space.
🤔 Lessons & Reflections
After having consistent meetings with stakeholders, I was able to understand their pain points, in this case, their low interaction time in 'content section'. It was a good opportunity to understand not only the users' needs, but also the product's point of view.
Later I figured out that this was called a 'product sense'!
