Expansive: 0 to 1 research & design for an early stage startup
The challenge
Expansive is an early-stage startup that is focused on designing software for neurodiverse children and their parents. Expansive aims to provide digital tools to help support neurodiverse needs and implement therapeutic methods on the assumption that this doesn’t currently exist.
The Expansive founders had a lot of assumptions about the neurodiverse problem space. They already had an idea for a mobile application they wanted to build but wanted extensive research done to see if their idea made sense. They wanted to bring in a research & design team to perform all their initial research and create an initial prototype for eventual testing with a pilot school in Chicago.
Achievements
Took the founding team from 0 to 1— prototype, extensive exploratory user research and product market fit research.
Provided the founders with a list of recommendations moving forward.
Pivoted the original direction of the product based on user research; debunked the founders assumptions about needs of the child (digital tools already exist here) and focused on helping the parents.
Expansive project
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Role
Supporting UX Designer/researcher
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Deliverables
01. Research study plan
02. Market research & competitive analysis
03. Documented user interviews with SME’s and parents
04. Problem statement, user persona, and journey mapping
05. Divergent idea prototypes & testing
06. Mid-fidelity prototypes & testing
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Team
One lead UX Designer
Three supporting designers/researchers
One project manager
Founders
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Timeline
Eight weeks
Problem space
The founders had made some initial assumptions based on personal experience and we led a kickoff workshop to gain insights into their assumptions. Initial assumptions 1-4:
01.
Lack of well built tools
There is a lack of well built digital tools to help Neurodiverse children; a visual scheduling tool/application might be one way to combat this.
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No feedback loop for parents
Parents lack a feedback loop on what is working and what isn’t working in terms of their parenting so it takes longer to learn and adjust as their child makes progress.
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Lack of proper data collection
There is a lack of proper data collection in the Neurodiverse parenting space and no way to measure incremental improvements.
04.
Lots of tools & methods with no extra help
Parents must learn to navigate a range of methods and tools alone with little to no help from outside forces.
Constraints & limitations
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Time constraint
We only had 8 weeks to source users, interview them and gain enough insight into the problem space to decide on a design direction.
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Finding users & subject matter experts
Neurodiversity creates a more dynamic and sometimes chaotic environment within families. Finding users who were available and comfortable talking about this sensitive topic in a remote environment was difficult.
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No developers
The founders chose not to include a developer partner in our design project which made it difficult to gauge what was technically feasible for the founders timeline to release.
Approach
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01. Familiarize
My first step was to familiarize myself with the problem space. What are the challenges associated with neurodiverse children living in a world designed for neurotypical people?
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02. Client alignment
We met with the clients to align on goals. Why did they want to start this company & why neurodiversity? Realizing the ‘why’ behind their passion helped us narrow down the focus of our research.
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03. Research strategy
Because the clients were starting from assumptions based on personal experience and hadn’t done any research — we were starting from 0. We drafted a research plan that outlined what research would be the most beneficial.
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04. Research execution
We looked at competitors that aid parents in their daily interaction with their children. We sourced & interviewed 7 parents & 4 subject matter experts. Based on our research insights & affinity mapping, we crafted a problem statement and user persona.
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05. Divergent concepting
Using our affinity maps, problem statement and user persona, each designer created their own individual low fidelity concepts. We then put them together into a prototype for testing.
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06. Testing concepts
We put drafted a test plan and tested our diverged concepts with 6 users and 2 additional subject matter experts.
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07. Converged prototype
After receiving feedback on our diverged concepts, we worked collaboratively to create a mid-fidelity prototype.
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08. Testing & recommendations
We performed 5 additional usability tests on our mid-fidelity prototype. We took this feedback and created a list of recommendations for the client moving forward.
01. Familiarize
I performed a lot of exploratory research to help me better understand the problem, the subject matter and the market. Here are four of the key discoveries I made upon initial exploration:
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Diagnosis
It it difficult for neurodiverse children to get a diagnosis. A diagnosis is often required for schooling and insurance!
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Finding help
It is extremely hard for parents to find an available psychiatrist or psychologist, let alone one that is a good fit for the family.
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Implementing therapies
Often it is hard to find and implement therapies on your own that actually work. Parents need guidance on what therapies to use and how to use them properly.
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Information overload
It is difficult for parents to to navigate all the various available resources (especially online). How do parents know which resources are trustworthy? How do parents find local resources?
02. Client alignment
The founders wanted us to get very exploratory and cast a wide net in terms of research and initial designs.
Client’s focus:
“Just the very mundane things that should be very natural and easy, are going to be very, very hard for these families. We want to help with that. Think outside the box.”
“Neurodiverse individuals often struggle with daily tasks; organization, flexibility, transitions, futuring and forecasting as their sense of time can be different.”
03. Research strategy
We decided on some end goals for our initial research and based on these end goals, we outlined our research plan.
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Market research & competitive analysis
To gain an understanding of which digital tools already exist for neurodiverse children & their parents. Where is there opportunity?
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Exploratory interviews with parents
To gain an understanding of how lives of parents with neurodiverse children are impacted, which support tools are missing and which support tools are currently the most successful.
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Exploratory interviews with subject matter experts
To gain an understanding of where the struggles are for parents, for children and what tools the subject matter experts use to help.
04. Research execution
— Market research & competitive research
We initially looked at 5 direct competitors. We felt both the parent and child angle of this problem needed to be explored. We wanted to take into consideration digital tools currently being used for neurodiverse children (direct competitors) but also tools being used more broadly for mental health and community building.
We then looked at 3 indirect competitors related to areas we thought might be interesting to explore in the neurodiverse realm; parental mental health, AI as a helpful tool for therapies & a parenting blog/guide.
— Interviewing users & subject matter experts
Sourcing users to interview was hard! Lots of parents had their children at home with them due to COVID-19 remote learning programs. We should have started sourcing users at the very outset of our project.
*Lesson learned number one.
Our goals were to listen, observe and prompt our users to share as much as possible. We wanted to know what a day in their life looked like, where they struggled, where they found joy, what tools they currently used and what they wanted to use but didn’t have access to. We interviewed 7 users & 4 SME’s.
I conducted one of the SME interviews (a Behavior Analyst) and 3 of the user interviews.
SME affinity mapping
“I’m always my own worst critic and very hard on myself... You don’t see your own behavior always, right?”
“It can get very frustrating to compare your children and your parenting to people who are parenting children who are neurotypical because those children tend to be able to follow societal rules.”
Interview I did with a Child Psychologist and PCIT (Parent Child Interaction Therapy) Specialist.
Video length: 2 minutes & 25 seconds
— Parents struggles, joys & needs: affinity mapping themes, crafting problem statement and user persona
After completing all of our affinity mapping, we found four common struggles as well as four common needs. We also found one common joy between SMEs and Users; tangible and measurable progress. Here are the main themes from our interviews:
Struggles:
Isolation and judgment from other parents
Time management
Understanding and empathy for their child
Staying calm in the presence of their child
Needs:
Making time for parent/child connection
Self reflection to help improve parenting
Self care
Community & resources (trusted & local)
Joys (one common joy across both SME’s & users):
Witnessing and measuring progress
Problem statement:
Parents need easily accessible, trusted tools to better communicate and connect with their neurodiverse children — to help in decreasing feelings of isolation and increasing introspection to avoid heightened emotional responses.
User persona
Competitive research insights
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01. Visual schedule
This is being done successfully by several other competitors (founders were leaning in this direction). Does not make sense to recreate it for an MVP.
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02. Community space & resources
There is an opportunity here. This may include social connections for parents that are direct (physical/in-person), indirect (parallel on social media) and trusted resources (local resources would also be beneficial).
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03. Parent/child connection space
There is opportunity here as well. This may include specific therapies for both parties and/or therapies that encourage parent & child to work together.
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04. Calming techniques
This is being done already but nothing with a focus on parents & neurodiverse children. This might include specialized therapies, meditation, visuals and breathing techniques for parent & child to use together.
User & SME interview insights
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01. Progress
Both SME’s and parents felt joyful when they saw measurable progress in their child’s behavior. Measuring progress could be an important feature to include in the product.
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02. Community space
Parents feel judged al he time for their child’s behavior. It’s important that they have a group of people they trust to turn to for support and help.
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03. Parent/child connection space
Building understanding & trust between the parent and child is invaluable. A therapy that is achieving this — Parent Child Interaction Therapy (or PCIT).
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04. Calming techniques
Calming techniques would be beneficial to explore and possibly integrate into the product. Staying calm or losing calm factored into all the most memorable moments for parents.
05. Divergent concepting
We (the four designers) started sketching our own individual concepts rooted in our interviews, problem statement & user persona. Here is what we came up with:
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Documenting emotions
This idea was all about self awareness and focusing the parent in times of anger.
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Helpful chatbot
This idea was about meeting the parents where they are and offering solutions.
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Community learning
This idea was about giving instructional tools to the parents and providing community.
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Trusted resources
This was about amassing trusted resources into one place.
06. Testing concepts
We tested our diverged concepts with 6 users and interviewed 2 additional SME’s. Our mistake in this round of testing was building a usability test plan instead of a desirability test plan. We focused more on the workings of our prototypes and less on whether the actual concepts/solutions were desirable to users.
The prototypes we tested.
Annotations of changes to be made and potential ideas.
Testing insights
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Documenting emotions: extra step
Parents didn’t understand what they were going to get out of this idea. Documenting emotions felt like an extra step.
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Helpful chatbot: polarizing
The chatbot idea should be tabled. Users either liked it or hated it. This might be something to revisit later as a feature that users could use or ignore depending on preference.
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Community learning: simplify
This idea held user’s attention but was executed in a confusing way, further simplification & reorganization of the information is needed. This will need to be tested further to figure out which aspects of this feature are of highest value to the user.
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Trusted resources: curate
This idea was well received by users. Adding onboarding is recommended to allow for a more curated selection of material to live in this section.
07. Converged prototype
During affinity mapping of our concept testing we did find that users preferred the solutions that centered around:
The relationship with the child (parent/child emphasis)
Documenting progress (child emphasis)
Quick access to helpful information (resources)
We converged parent/child emphasis training (which tested well) with the concept of parental resources that would help parents learn better ways to interact with their neurodiverse child:
Short training videos: to teach parents positive ways to interact and to make parents feel connected to & involved in child’s therapies
Ability to record interactions with the child: used to document progress & to be shared with teachers/therapists
Resources: to help parents feel more connected to their community & informed
08. Testing & recommendations
We performed 5 additional usability tests. For these tests we focused on the workings of our prototype AND on the desirability of our different features so that the client could move forward more easily with the most desirable features and iterate.
Recommendations:
Continue to focus and streamline the product based on feedback; less is more.
Perform card sorting to better understand how information within the application should be housed.
Focus on the parent; nix visual scheduler for the children.
Include onboarding in the product.
There is an opportunity to build a tool that better connects parents with subject matter experts (psychologists, therapists, specialists, teachers) to share information.
Lessons learned
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Sourcing users
Think about sourcing users as early as possible, prior to the project starting. It was difficult to find and schedule enough participants during each round of testing.
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Use the right testing method
Know when to use a desirability test versus a usabiity test and how to properly execute them both based on the needs of the client.
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Too many features
We tried to include too many features and overwhelmed the users with information. Start small for an MVP and build upon it.