Chore Management App exercise for Kids
They'll even ask to help!
• Project Management • Product Designer • Strategist • App Design • UX Research • Information Architecture • User Flow • Design System • Product Branding • Sketching • Wireframing • Prototyping • Stakeholder Presentation •
As the sole designer for this fictional project, I was able to create and develop the project from the seed of a thought down through to three iterations with a final stakeholder presentation.
Final deliverable included a case study included: UX Research, Affinity Map, Empathy Map, Personas, Problem Statements, Journey Map, Ideation, Hand drawn Sketching, User Stories, Site Map, Competitor Heuristics, Guerilla Testing, User Flow, Wireframes, Branding, Design System, Low, Mid, and Hi-Fidelity Prototypes, along with a final Video Presentation and Visual.
Figma, Figma Mirror, Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Google Suite, Galaxy S21 Ultra, Zoom, Loom
WeChore is a task management app designed for parents encouraging kids to complete household chores. Through research, I had found that this frustration is an ongoing, world-wide parent/child battle for both sides.
My biggest challenge was to design an app that would motivate two very different target audiences: Parents and their children.
By adopting a front-loaded research initiative the project progressed the app toward a research-based solution, and concluded with a human-centered design. The outcome was a success! Both parents and their kids that I had interviewed were excited about the app and wanted to know when it would be completed for download and actual use!
Mission & Vision
Parents should be able to monitor their children’s chores easily, efficiently, and without guilt. The primary and secondary research showed that parents want an easy way to have their children complete chores. Guilt was a strong, motivating feeling which resulted in failure on the part of the parent. The parents would complete the chore themselves rather than coerce or bribe the child.
To better understand the audience, I conducted secondary research, structured user interviews, and personal insights to define the problem statement.
Interviewing the target group was incredibly helpful in understanding what the parents felt was important, and what they believed motivated their children.
At this point in the project, I had planned to create one app for both target groups. It wasn't until the interviews, Affinity and Empathy Maps were developed did I realize that these were two completely different groups with completely different motivations.
I chose to focus on the parent for several reasons.
1. Chores are good for kids
Both parents and research has shown that kids who take responsibility for household chores grow up to be more successful adults.
2. Parents don’t want to fight over chores
Parents become frustrated and angry when kids refuse to do their chores. This older generation was raised to believe that all household members must contribute without coercion or payment.
3. Kids want Parents to love them
Although kids aren’t quick to turn down money, they really just want parental love, time, and approval. Parental pride is more motivating than money.
After interviewing five parents and 2 kids, I quickly realized that the battle around chores is a high-stress subject. And wasn't going away any time soon!
As a product designer, I was determined to find a way to get both parents and kids to work together on this challenge to relieve this strain on the parent-child relationship, even with the focus on the parent user to start.
And that's when I got really excited about digging in to the Competitive Heuristics.
The goal of WeChore is to relieve stress in families around the hot-topic of chores. All three apps focus on earning money, when research has proven is NOT the primary motivation for kids.
Working with users to navigate through simple sketches, layouts, features and ideas blended with a site map in order to work with the approach of the app’s user interface, flow and experiences. This is what I found:
As I was building the flow of this app it was clear to me that it needed to be simple and intuitive.
The three tasks that needed to be clear and concise were:
The low-fidelity wireframes gave the project a chance to clean up the sketches and transform them into a more tangible prototype by assessing functionalities and layouts. The progress-bars and card-deck style came into fruition.
User testing demonstrated a few key insights:
I chose to focus on the parent for several reasons.
Brand Platform
WeChore conveys the concepts of completing a chore together, asynchronous and at different times. The parent assigns it; the child completes it; the parent approves it; and then the child is rewarded with praise and entitlements. The app behaves as a subjective third party who maintains the “wallet” of points eliminating additional nagging.
Brand Personality
WeChore has a brand that promotes encouragement and fun, to make a real difference helping parents effectively & seamlessly work with their children to accomplish tasks.
Brand Attributes
The logo needed to appeal to both the parents and their children. Although I was focused on the parent, the brand needed to stay upbeat, fun, and youthful for this to work. Additionally, I attempted to give the brand a feeling of glass-morphism, but not completely. Just enough to keep the look and feel fresh and youthful.
Hands are the focal point of expression and additionally reference the icon in the WeChore logo while the words “We” and “Chore” indicate the joint effort.
Putting the project into motion was a lot of fun and because I had already established the brand, the flow, and the wireframes, everything came together quickly. At the same time I was taking a course in Figma and was enjoying the software.
The power of the Usability Testing was magical. I had discovered that the first few testers had incredible insights, while the last two proved torturous because I already knew the issues and couldn’t make the changes.
After creating a usability chart by priorty, I was able to see patterns. Here were the key insights:
The second round of High Fidelity Prototypes clarified the top three issues from the usability testing:
1. Approval language was CONFUSING
2. Approved Chores DISAPPEAR
3. They want to see the “proof”
- The Users liked my photos, but weren’t interested in taking their own.
- The kid group has a separate desire to take photos and to show off their work which can be addressed in the kid’s app.
1. Rework Dashboard
2. Clarify Language
3. Develop the Child App to Match