Product Ideation, UX Research, UX Design, UI Design (ADES 5440)
outnabout is an event search and creation app, built for the homeschooling community. It provides users the ability to create a variety of events, including educational, social and athletic events, and post them to a message board to allow other users in the community to quickly find and engage with these events.
The impetus for this specific application was borne out of a specific pain-point for the homeschool community: finding engaging opportunities for social interaction with other like-minded homeschooling families.
This application was designed to fulfill requirements for ADES 5440, Designing Screen Based Interactions, as part of coursework for the MA in Interaction Design program at the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design.
My Role
I was the sole Product Designer for this project.
The Challenge
Research, design and test a mobile application to solve a specific problem for a specific set of users.
Product Ideation
This idea came from my own life experience. As a child, I was homeschooled, and while I was able to develop skills like self-directed learning and study focus, I experienced quite a bit of social isolation; we were the only folks in our neighborhood that homeschooled, and all the kids my age were in public school while I was at home.
Regardless, I always saw the value that homeschooling could provide young children, and when my wife and I began to grow our family we decided to try homeschooling as an alternative to the traditional public education approach.
While we were fortunate enough to belong to a larger community of homeschooling families, I still noticed that it took concerted effort to arrange group social activities for the kids to approximate the levels of interaction provided by traditional public school environment. Additionally, I noticed that my wife went to great efforts to become a better home educator, even as a certified teacher herself.
I started thinking about how I could use technology to resolve some of these pain points.
User Research
Scholarly
I began looking for literature that could help shine some light on the social challenges associated with homeschooling.
One of the biggest points of contention between the homeschool community and its detractors is the concept of socialization. Many detractors mention anecdotal experiences of homeschooled children who are ”socially awkward” as evidence of the harms of homeschooling. While my personal experience as a parent did not support these assertions (my children are, to my knowledge, developing into socially well-adjusted individuals), for the purposes of this project I decided to dig deeper into the literature.
I found several scholarly articles that shine some light into the issues of socialization, homeschooling, and the arguments around it.
One article (“Homeschooling: Depriving Children of Social Development?”, Samantha Lebeda, Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues, 2005), says the following regarding the topic:
Socialization is the process by which individuals learn to establish and maintain relationships with others, become accepted members of society, regulate their own behavior in accordance with society's codes and standards, and get along with others. Many educators, child development specialists, and social scientists claim that homeschooling deprives the child of the ability to develop socialization skills. Parents of homeschoolers disagree, sometimes violently, with this contention.
Another article (“The Role of Family and Parental Characteristics in the Scope of Social Encounters of Children in Homeschooling”, Oz Guterman, Ari Neuman, Journal of Child and Family Studies, 2017) seems to reinforce this statement, saying:
It appears that parents understand the importance of social encounters for homeschooled children intuitively, since a number of researchers have shown that the socialization of children in homeschooling is important to their parents. For example, Medlin (2013), who summarized numerous studies on the social context of children in homeschooling, claimed that homeschooling parents expect that their children will respect and get along with people of different backgrounds, provide their children with a variety of social opportunities outside the family, and believe that their children’s social skills are as good as those of other children. In their research for the National Foundation for Educational Research (in England), Atkinson et al. (2007) found that parents recognized the importance of providing children with opportunities for socialization and used diverse sources of support to fulfill this need. Parents mentioned family and friends, local homeschooling groups, religious and community organizations, sports programs and the Internet as sources of social relationships for their children. Gathercole (2007) concluded that parents in home education tended to encourage their children to participate in a variety of activities and actively search out these opportunities for them.
However, the authors go on to describe the inconsistencies that are present in the homeschooling system:
However, previous research has demonstrated considerable differences among parents in terms of the scope of their children’s social encounters. In other words, the number of encounters varied greatly among families (Guterman and Neuman 2016). In light of the findings cited above regarding the importance of social encounters for children in homeschooling, it is essential to understand the source of these differences.
The article goes on to expand, within the context of social interaction, on the influence of the structure of the homeschool environment, the nature of interactions between the children and the parents, and the correlation between extroversion and the scope of social interactions.
These articles seem to reinforce my initial hypothesis, based on my own personal experience, that while socialization is valued within the context of homeschooling families, methods and tools for encouraging said socialization are inconsistent and not available to the entire community.
Contextual
As part of the research, I also conducted interviews of several homeschool parents in my community, and found that they had a few pain points when planning socialization activities.
“I need to know if I can bring all my kids”
“I don’t always know when schedules change, or if a kid is sick.”
“Who all is coming out? This is important for my children.”
Based on the interviews I defined a proto-persona of the user to help guide feature selection and design. I chose a proto-persona approach, as opposed to a full-blown persona, due to my intimate knowledge of the target user group.
“Mary is a 35 year old mother of 3. She stays at home and works with her children, and her husband is the primary income provider for the home. She has a college degree and worked before raising a family, but chose to remain at home. She is highly concerned with ensuring that she is providing her children with the best possible educational experiences, consistent with their beliefs. She worries that her kids are not “getting out” enough, and it bothers her when her friends who don’t homeschool question her choice for homeschooling.”
With these facts in hand, I began working on a prototype to address these needs, specifically: finding the best experiences for her children and strengthening her own abilities as a home educator.
Prototype Design
From the very beginning, my goal was to design an application that was familiar, simple to use, and allowed for quick identification and creation of events for Mary. I drew inspiration from several applications (Meetup, Apollo). I used a Lean UX approach to design and prototyping, and built all the assets in Sketch.
Sketches
I began by sketching a bare bones version of the primary screen. Over the years I have found I work best when ideating in a digital medium, so these were the only hand-drawn sketches I made.
Features
After conducting interviews and analysis of existing feature sets of similar applications, I defined the following features for the 1.0 version of the app:
Event Search
The app’s default state is the event search screen. This screen has a simple bottom nav setup with two event categories, Kids and Parents, and an event creation action button in the center. The user can easily navigate between the two sections using the bottom nav, and scroll through the event listings.
The list is fully searchable via the search function at the top, and filterable using the filter dropdown. The filter tags are defined by the user that created the event.
Filters
Users can filter by faith-based status, activity type, age groups, location, date and time, and availability.
The “faith-based” option came about as a response to feedback received during the class sessions that would allow users to further classify events. This change was well received during testing with my sample of cooperative homeschooling moms.
Event Creation
This feature allows users to create a new event, with the ability to add searchable tags. The intent is to allow users to search specific event category types. Users can classify the event as either For Parents or For Kids, which then automatically filters and displays the event in the relevant section.
Users can then add date and time, filterable details, location, and event description. The event creator’s choices in this section define the filterable attributes.
Event Details and Sign Up
The Event Details section provides the user all the information related to the event they are interested in, and gives them the ability sign up for the event.
Upon going into the event, the user can immediately scan the event name, date/time, location and category. From this page, they can add the event to their calendar and get directions to the event location. There is also a section that lists other members that have signed up for the event, which can increase the value of attending the event and increase engagement. There is also a longer “Event Details” section that can provide a more elaborate description.
When the user chooses to sign up for the event, they can specify how many people are attending with them to help the organizer plan appropriately. The user can also type in any questions for the organizer in this section.
Visual Design
The visual design choices for this app are a blend of iOS UI and Material Design guidelines.
Color
I chose a simple color palette that centered around a playful blue for the kids sections and CTAs (Blue Ribbon, #304FFE), a more mature beige for the parents sections (Pot Pourri, #F0E4D6), and a darker pastel-like lavender for editing dialogs (San Marino, #3F51B5). I maximized the use of white space throughout to enhance readability, comply with WCAG 2.0 accessibility standards, and make the overall experience easier and lighter.
Typography
Since the application is intended to promote social engagement and educational pursuits, I selected two fonts that display those qualities.
The title font is American Typewriter, a proportional slab serif font created in 1974. This font alludes to the educational aims of this app by evoking a sense of scholarship and old-fashioned studiousness.
The body copy font is Montserrat, in multiple weights. Montserrat is a Google Font created by type designer Julieta Ulanovsky. This font, based on the South American urban typography that emerged in the first half of the twentieth century, is intended to evoke the beauty and interplay between the designed urban environment and the natural world. I chose this font to create a sense of approachability for the app, as well as highlight the purpose of the app: social interaction, which usually happens in urban environments.
Interaction
The models for most interactions come from iOS Human Interface Guidelines (header and footer navigation), Google’s Material Design (activity cards, elevations, iconography) and Facebook Mobile (activity overlays, content layout).
Next Steps
I will be expanding the feature set of the app, based on the reception it received with my testing pool. Some additional features will include an event creator admin console, additional categories, commenting/chat functionality, and extended personalization.