Sprouting: An Information Searching & Selection Platform to Support the Parenting Experience
Abstract
Although new parents wish to act perfectly when their baby arrives, they do not naturally know how to be successful parents. Instead, they gradually develop their parenting knowledge and skills via experience and a variety of informational resources, including courses, magazines, website, and applications. Numerous parenting education programs and systems have been developed and launched in the current market to help parents and families obtain proper parenting information and professional parenting knowledge. However, most parents become overwhelmed by this wealth of information and unsure about selecting the most helpful tools. There exists a gap in the current parenting education market: parents are navigating this dark jungle without a map, unable to locate resources with too many to choose from and too few clues for selecting the most suitable resource to match his/her personal or specific needs and context. To address the current gap in the parenting education field, a mobile APP system is designed that facilitates parents’ access to parenting resources. This APP system employs an optimized user interface that enhances parents’ interactive user experience in searching, sharing, and communicating parenting knowledge, including theories, techniques, tips and tools. With such a parenting knowledge-aided platform, parents can easily perform a search task and quickly find the information that best suits their needs and circumstances. Furthermore, parents from local communities can establish groups or circles to share and communicate their parenting experiences; therefore, it is crucial to forming a community-based network to support parents who are less experienced and lack the necessary knowledge. This APP system can help parents gain awareness of essential parenting knowledge, acquire new skills, enhance their parenting capabilities, and offer parents continuous support during the parenting journey. In this thesis, I will share my research process. In the beginning, qualitative data is collected, analyzed, and reported via reviewing existing peer products. By conducting semi-structured interviews with several parents, I present the whole ideation process with several research methods, such as brainstorming and card sorting. I will introduce and analyze how the design solution can help parents to perform an efficient searching task. After developing the visual design, a heuristic evaluation is conducted to identify the system’s usability problems. Lastly, a refined design will be presented based on considering the evaluation outcomes.
Degree
M.F.A.
Advisors
Qian, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Design
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