Ready Play
taking the next steps with a design
the challenge:
Planning children’s activities for parents is difficult. It requires multiple sites, multiple apps, and many back and forth when coordinating with other parents. Ready Play is an activity planning app that seeks to simplify this process, putting multiple sources of activities in one place, along with letting parents easily coordinate with each other. They approached our team with a early prototype, and some initial research.
the goals:
Review Ready Play’s existing research with an eye for gaps and patterns, and supplement it with our own.
Test out their initial prototype with users, to find highlights and pain points.
Develop new features based on research and testing.
Initial Client Meeting
We started off by meeting with the founders of Ready Play, to understand where they currently were at with their app, and what they had in mind for the future. They had sent out a survey to parents, asking about their challenges with planning activities. They had also made a prototype of their app, but had not done any testing with it.
Research
With research, we started by examining the clients’ survey. I consolidated over fifty responses into key takeaways, the main being that 80% of respondents relied on word of mouth for information on activity providers. We also performed a competitive audit of the market space, and discovered many apps that tried to fill this void, but fell short when it came to a calendar feature.
Planning Features
We had our work cut out for us, but not a lot of time to complete it. We started off by creating a project scope, giving ourselves clear goals and milestones for every step of the way. We divided our work into three sections: Research, Testing, and Features.
Remote User Testing
After gaining some insights into users and competitors, it was time to test the Ready Play app. We drafted a testing script, and interviewed a number of parents. It was also important to have a designer insight as well, so I performed a heuristic analysis of the app. Testing taught us that the app had good visuals overall, and the search function was solid. However, the current calendar app needed work.
We didn’t want to just look at what existed, but the future as well, so we created feature sets to be used in Kano Analysis, alongside the usability test. From our seven features, the one that scored the highest was the sponsorship feature, letting users help those in need.
Presenting our work
We expanded on the sponsorship feature, and simplified the calendar section, and were ready to present our findings to our clients. In addition, we created a hand-off packet, containing all of our data, prototypes, and potential ideas for the future.
NEXT STEPS
Several features we tested had high marks from the Kano Analysis, but due to time we did not fully flesh them out. Expanding the app to include them would be our next phase, along with additional testing of the updated app.
Reflections and Takeaways
Working on a team meant I had to carve out my own niche, and focus on my strengths, while relying on others. For this project it meant I did primarily research and synthesis, but also helped with prototyping features, and testing as well. Having a limited amount of time meant quickly finding my path, and sticking to it.