PARENTAL SHIELD
OVERVIEW
PROJECT BRIEF
Each day there is an estimated amount of 500,000 online predators active, and about 50% of the victims turn out to be children younger than the age of 15. Parental Shield is an app motivated by Human Trafficking and online predators to help parents prevent children from being exposed to these situations. With this app, parents can track their child’s location, limit their screen time and keep track of the child’s online activities.
THE PROBLEM
Parents want to protect their children from online predators and keep track of their location but still not invade too much of their children's privacy at the same time.
RESPONSIBILITIES
To better understand our users, I used a Human-Centered Design approach by engaging with individuals through interviews, collecting qualitative data to gain more insight, followed by wireframing, prototyping, usability testing and iterations.
Research
Secondary Research
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A common misconception is that it doesn’t occur in the United States, however the United States is ranked #1 with the highest numbers in people being Trafficked.
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With the rise of social media being an aid, it has become easier for predators to groom young victims online. Many popular apps & games such as Fortnite and Instagram are now used as platforms to recruit younger victims.
Competitive Analysis
To understand the problem space, I compared two companies that had some relation to the topic. Overall I found Thorn was more comparable to my problem space. Thorn is a start-up company that creates software to detect CSAM, which helps protect children from human trafficking. Polaris is also a very good source that keeps up to date on Human trafficking data.
PolarisProject.org
STRENGTH
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Interface is very clean and easy to navigate.
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Font & Icons are big and easy to read
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Helps educate people with Myths and website is very informative with a lot of data.
WEAKNESS
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No market features to make users stay
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Information is on the bottom and makes audience lose interest fast
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Bottom scroll bar would be better at the top for quicker access
Thorn.org
STRENGTH
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Creates Software to prevent CSAM. One is Spotlight & the other is Safer
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Contrast of colors work well together.
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Fonts and content is very clean and easy to understand.
WEAKNESS
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Home page is very empty and not attention grabbing enough.
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Grey blog links would be easier if there was a scroll horizontally option
Research Plan
Before starting on this journey, I wrote out a research plan that listed the goals I wanted to be met.
Interviews
To gather participants, I surveyed about 20 people and found 5 suitable participants which was; around ages 20-60, has at least one child that uses social media or plays video games. I interviewed each user for about 30 minutes with 13 of the same questions.
Heidi Cloud
Heidi is a lawyer that works on Human Trafficking cases, she said if there was an app she would want something that could be able to access their messages or something that could be used to prevent cyber bullying.
Nina Tran
" My child is too young to even go online, but my brother plays games such as Fortnite and often receives mean messages."
Carlos Garcia
"I have never been impacted by human trafficking but I know the Hartsfield's Jackson Atlanta Airport is a hub for Human Trafficking because we have one of the biggest airport's"
Affinity Map
After gathering qualitative data from user interviews, I combined all the notes and grouped them into categories.
Empathy Map
To help gain more insight on user behaviors, their feelings, wants and needs, I created an empathy map to help me later create a persona.
Persona
Amanda Scott
32, Los Angelas CA
About
Amanda is a busy working mom that struggles to find time for her family. She has 4 kids who are always focused on their mobile devices and feels this is unhealthy. She wants to spend more family time outdoors away from the internet.
Goals
• To have a better family bond
• Teach children online safety
• Find ways to monitor kids online
• Finding ways to entertain her kids
Frustrations
• Children spending too much time online
• Struggling between her career and kids
• Fear children meeting online predators
" How Might We "
to figure out a solution, I wrote out some How Might We problem statements.
• HMW help parents teach their kids about online predators?
• HMW provide more online security for users on Social Media
• HMW design a product that makes our users feel more confident letting their children use the internet
• HMW detect online predators?
User Story / MVP
"As a busy working mom, Amanda wants to purchase a Parental Control app, so that she can keep track of her child's whereabouts at work."
For my MVP, I choose 3 main red routes Amanda would want to explore most.
Site Map
I made a site map to prioritize how pages are linked and labeled.
Ideation
Design & Test
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Wire Flow
Mood Board
Red is an intense color, that is very attractive and grabs people's attention. I chose this color scheme also due to the fact that it means danger and can associate with the problem space. I created this moodboard to depict how I wanted my screens to look.
Style Guide
The style guide is a design guideline I created to document my thought process so that I can keep track of it when I make the High Fidelity screens. I also like to add a WCAG, to help choose colors that are also suitable for color blindness.
Summary
Parental Shield was a Capstone Stone project that I spent about 6+ month's on during my time studying at Springboards UX Bootcamp. I picked this topic due to the fact that it hit's close to home, and I'm also a mother of 2 daughters. I have learned so much about the problem space and User experience design after working on this and extremely proud of this piece. If you have any questions or just want to chat, shoot me an email!