CubTales - Daycare Reporting App
The CubTales App leads a way for Parents to connect to their child’s day by providing an easy way to look at how time was spent at school, various activities done, what the child ate, and how long they napped. It makes it easy for the teacher to add updates, and for the parent to receive them.
Role:
I worked on understanding user needs through user interviews and also through competitor analysis of other apps that provide daily reports. I worked on iterative sketches and designs to present a mobile app design that allows for a better workflow than my main competitor app I was trying to improve from i.e Tadpoles.
Users & Audience:
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Parents of children below the age of 5. Another side to the solution is the teacher’s admin portal/app that will allow input that becomes available on the parent facing app side.
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Discovery:
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Using research, survey and interview questions to understand user’s current pain points or desires from such an app without introduction of personal bias, and then documenting the findings
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Scope & Constraints:
The current MVP Designs solution is focused on only the parent facing side of the app. A corresponding teacher facing portal/app to facilitate a clean handshake of information is in plan for the future.
The Problem, the Challenge
Parents need an easy and secure way to be able to get updates of their child’s day in school/daycare.
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The high level goals are to:
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Provide an easy to use, simple to navigate solution that allows parents to see their child's activities, class announcements and daily reports.
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Provide a way for parents to engage with the teacher/class to share information.
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Provide secure ways for parents to save/download their child’s photos/videos but restricting download when other kids are involved.
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Track user analytics to learn best from user behavior and for continuous improvement on user engagement and workflow enhancements.
Design by Iteration
Using research, survey and interview questions to understand user’s current pain points or desires from such an app without introduction of personal bias, and then documenting the findings.
Once scope and data from research was confirmed, I worked on defining user stories, sketching out user flows and defining the information architecture and general structure of the designs.
Next step was to generate low fidelity wireframes to line out. After which I moved on to create the prototypes.
It was important to receive feedback on the wireframe and prototypes and document it, so I could understand the gaps and work on enhancing them. This iterative designing helped achieve something that looked more clean and aligned to the user experience and design goals.
Persona
User Stories
Parents need an easy and secure way to be able to get updates of their child’s day in school/daycare.
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The high level goals and user stories are :
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Provide an easy to use, simple to navigate solution that allows parents to see their child's activities, class announcements and daily reports.
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​As a Parent I need to be able to see my Child's daily report and activity details in school.​​
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Provide a way for parents to engage with the teacher/class to share information.
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As a Parent I should be able to interact with teacher on sharing information through the app.​
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Provide secure ways for parents to save/download their child’s photos/videos but restricting download when other kids are involved.
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As a Parent I should be able to view my child's pictures and videos and be able to save them.​
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Sketch
User Flows
Information Architecture
Brand Identity
Branding and logo created on Adobe Illustrator. The Aesthetics focus on the naming and logo being aligned.
Test, Learn & Improve
Key feedback received from user testing:
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Keep the prototype more connected and real time.
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Have a way in the future to show designs for how teachers would login updates.
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How can a user view Images/Download - add a Save button.
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Show how pop ups appear
Low Fidelity Wireframes
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Wrap up
The need for Cubtales design came from identifying areas of improvement from competitor apps. With informed decisions from user research from real parents and thinking through solutions that could be value added functionalities for parents, the new design focuses on improved and seamless user experience.
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Some enhancements I would consider are to be able to make the app more personalized for parents, to make it more interactable and expand its scope to creating a community with the class parents.