Sustaining Exchange, Value Learning Ed-tech
A children's pre-loved product exchange platform
ROLE
UX Designer
UX Researcher
What I did
Competitive research
User interviews
Affinity mapping
Information architecture
Lo-fi sketching
Mid-fi prototyping
Hi-fi prototyping
Usability testing
Team
2 UX Designers
2 UX Researchers
1 Product Manager
YEAR
2023
Bring joy and learning into children's lives by providing products in a sustainable and cost-effective manner while enabling socio-emotional development.
Statistics
In the United States, there are 24.5 million children, and globally, there are 24 billion children under the age of 14.
Consumer Behavior
Parents often make significant purchases for their children, including toys, furniture, clothing, and educational materials, to support their functional and educational development.
Resource Waste
As children outgrow these items, they are frequently discarded, resulting in a significant waste of resources and a detrimental impact on the environment.
Current Practices
Presently, parents typically resort to various methods to donate or sell their children's items, including yard sales, Facebook Marketplace, giveaways, toy swap events, and thrift stores like Goodwill.
How might we create a revolutionary, integrated platform that transforms the lifecycle of children's products into a global, circular ecosystem that not only empowers parents and reduces environmental waste, but also actively promotes child engagement, emotional intelligence, sharing behavior, and holistic development?
Research goals : To understand how parents buy, sell or exchange used children’s products and how do their children feel about the process?
Interview :
6 participants - parents
Should have at least 1 child
Buy toys/kid's products on a regular basis
Use both online and offline methods to purchase
Interview Script
Frequent purchases and rapid outgrowth
Parents often make frequent purchases for their children, but children tend to outgrow items quickly.
Challenges of offline shopping
Offline shopping with kids is challenging, prompting many parents to seek convenient alternatives.
Child Involvement in Selection
Parents actively involve their children in the selection process, considering their preferences and needs.
Teaching Accountability
Parents aim to instill a sense of accountability in their children, potentially related to their belongings.
Involvement in Donation Process
Some parents engage their children in the process of donating items, fostering a sense of empathy and responsibility.
Empathy and Sharing Through Activities:
Parents use activities like playdates and toy swaps, as well as storytelling and games, as tools to teach empathy and sharing skills to their children.
Online Marketplace for Used Children's Products
Create a user-friendly online marketplace dedicated to receiving and donating gently used children's items.
Child-Centric Product Selection
Design the app to allow children to actively choose items from the available selection, involving them in the product selection process
Gamification for Child Development
Integrate gamification elements into the app to promote child development and engagement while using the platform.
AI-Powered Recommendations
Implement AI-driven product recommendations, considering factors such as age appropriateness, expert advice, buying behavior, user reviews, and more.
Child-Inclusive Donation Process
Develop a user flow within the app that encourages and facilitates children's involvement in the process of donating items.
Content for Sharing and Empathy
Create and curate content within the app that utilizes storytelling, games, and relevant concepts to instill values of sharing and empathy in children.
Lo-fi Sketches
Once we had our features and information architecture in place, we moved on to the ideation of a few of the main pages of the app. We used a whiteboard to collaboratively make sketches of screens.
Mid-Fi prototyping and testing
We moved on to create mid-fidelity prototypes for 5 flows through the app’s main functions.
We tested these with 2 users in a moderated in-person session
Hi-Fi prototyping and testing
With the insights from Mid-fi prototype testing, we moved on to creating Hi-fi prototypes. After adding imagery, the screens started making more sense to the users.
We conducted 1st round of testing with 9 users on usertesting.com and got constructive feedback.
Implementing those insights, we moved to 2nd round of testing on usertesting.com with 3 users, helping us refine our overall app.
Ipad version for child and compatibility
Add Micro interactions, sound & reduce data to make it more interesting for children
Strategize a proper rewards, points and value system that is easy for users
Interactive content design to integrate engaging storytelling.
Safety: Creating a safe exchange experience is essentials in this domain
Perspectives of Children: Researching with children can provide better insights in designing the experience
Values: Considering emotional experiences of the users brings value to the product differentiating the product in a generic transactional market