Discovering User Requirements


in Designing a Communication App for Grandparents and their Young Grandchildren

OVERVIEW

 

This phase of the project focused on discovering the users’ requirements and design requirements of designing a communication app for grandparents and their young children over distance to address some of the existing barriers that stop them from having an engaging experience remotely. In designing this platform I aimed to address the current challenges and unmet needs and to support the desired communication practices for children, grandparents and parents. 

ROLE

HCI/User Researcher, PhD Candidates

 

 

METHODS

  • Interview 
  • Diary 



Process

I started the discover phase of this project by understanding the three different user groups (grandparents, parents, children) in the context of technology-mediated communication between young children and their grandparents. For this purpose, I mainly focused on

  • Behaviours: Understand the current communication behaviours between grandparents and their young children using available technology tools (Skype, etc.) and if these tools satisfy their needs
  • Challenges: Understand the challenges and pain points of grandparents, parents and young chilren
  • Unmet Needs and Desires: Understand the unmet needs and desires of parents and grandparents that available communication tools can not support

 



Methods

Interview

I interviewed 20 participants including 10 grandparents and 10 parents of children between the ages of five to ten who were living remotely from their grandparents. I asked them about their relationships, different tools, frequency of communication, contents, challenges, concerns and conflicts.

Diary

I asked parents and grandparents to keep a diary of grandparent-grandchild communication and share stories of the communication and any challenge that they faced over a period of three weeks. 

 

Artifacts

I asked families to show me some objects such as photos or children’s drawings for grandparents or about grandparents. This method helped to elaborate more on the relationship between the grandparents and grandchildren.

 



Diversity of Participants

We recruited parents and grandparents with diverse demographics and cultural backgrounds. I gathered children’s perspectives through interviewing their parents. Some of the participants were living in different cities than their family and some were living in different countries with different time zones, language and culture. For some families the separation had happened before children were born and for some during the children’s childhood. 

This helped us to capture a variety of issues that might also arise due to separation, the limited in-person visit or cultural differences. 

 



User Persona



Key Insights and Design Recommendations

I categorized the key insights around 1) communication routines and behaviours, 2) unmet needs and 3) challenges. 

Based on these insights, I put together a few design recommendations:

These recommendations helped me to develop design principles to help guide the design in Phase 2 of this project.  You can read about the design process HERE.



Learning Keys

  • Learned to design and conduct interview and diary study with different user groups including older adults and families.  
  • Experienced challenges such as having participants with diverse demographics, geographical locations and cultural backgrounds and language barriers. 
  • I shared my experience of interviewing remote participants, lessons learned and some recommendations for other researchers in a book chapter here (Interviews with Remote Participants. IN Studying and Designing Technology for Domestic Life: Lessons From Home..).
  • Research results published and presented in a few different venues such as CHI2013 and CHI 2014. You can find the articles and posters here.