Safe & Sound

School search iOS app for safety minded parents across the political spectrum.

What's The Problem?

Parents who are searching for a new school for their child need a tool that provides clarity around and emphasizes the concept of safety in order to feel a sense of control about their child’s future when picking a school to attend.

Who's Using This Product

Parents across the political spectrum all want the best for their kids.A safe and supportive environment is a huge factor in student academics, but everyone defines safety in different ways.After answering a few questions, Safe & Sound will help parents find the safest school for their child to attend, designed around how they define safety.

My Role(s)

UX Research | UX Strategy | UX Design | UI Design

What About the Scope?

This app was designed to be a MVP and it was meant to test the waters with the “lens of safety” concept quickly. Therefore, lots of functionality was reserved for later.

"LENS OF SAFETY Concept" = MVP

School search iOS app for safety minded parents across the political spectrum.

Welcome to The Process

I started out with a simple problem statement to get as wide as possible from the beginning

“How do parents determine where to send their kids to school and how might we facilitate them?”

With this problem in mind, I was provided with 5 transcripts of interviews by parents discussing school choice. I was also provided access to 12 data streams, pertaining to school choice, from the client.

5 Interviews & Research

These interviews tried to answer questions like – What feelings, solutions, frustrations, and guiding principles do parents have when choosing a school for their kid?

I broke down the answers into 6 main categories (that were subdivided further). Behaviors, emotions, goals, needs, frustrations, pain points.

KEY FINDINGS are the patterns, the issues ALL the interviewees agreed upon. Here are the top ones.

Personal and Emotional Decision

The process of selecting a school is deeply personal and emotional for parents, as it directly impacts their child's future. This decision is influenced by factors beyond just academic quality.

Smaller Class Sizes

The most significant concern for parents when choosing a school is often the class size. They recognize the value of individualized attention and a more conducive learning environment that smaller class sizes can offer.

Proximity Matters

The proximity of the school to the parents' residence is a common consideration. Parents appreciate the convenience of having the school close by, reducing commuting time and facilitating involvement in their child's education.

Every parent has their own research method that works for them -- googling, interviewing students, interview parents, expos, and winging it.

For all, choosing a school is an emotional decision.Social factors play role.

Spouses may not be on the same page at the start.Parents that have children with special needs are worried about things like fairness, but at the same time want individualized attention.

Both academic and extra circular activities are important. Arts, STEM, gym, martial arts, etc...Special needs can be considered anything from down-syndrome to high sensitivity.

There is an environmental factor in choosing schools.Private schools can give access to things public schools can’t, like sports and art extras. Though, #1 is smaller class sizes.Its hard to pinpoint which schools have experience with which special needs.

Researching a school may not be as important as the kids in person reaction to the environment.

School visits as part of research may be timing dependent--nap time vs recess.Friends and family have opinions, about private vs public, that may bog down the process.

Price, school vs parent communication, location and child feelings add complications to selecting.

Even after a parent selects and a child attends, schools could institute major changes that effect the future. Communication is key.

Classroom size changes could happen at anytime based on mitigating factors.

Private schools get a bad rep when it comes to diversity and class, but there are tons of private schools to choose from.

Special needs, teacher comm, location, price, academics, religion -- can all be priorities to parents.

All parents value their proximity to the school.Kid’s self-esteem, kid’s feelings about environment, school facilities, and parent’s self evaluation -- can all be priorities to parents.

Parents may have preexisting hang ups with private school--what would the neighbors think?

Parents like their shy kids to feel comfortable and special needs kids to feel normal at school.

All parents do not report regret in choosing private schools. No matter the initial concern/fear, it seems to have resided.

Managing parents expectations is important. Parents worries don’t stop until their kids are settled.

Once the school is selected and kids attend, parents can set their next goal on the future.

School help the process by: having a website, communicating their philosophy, providing lots of activities, open comm with teachers.

School’s have admission standards, admission officers, and scholarships.

All parents make their final decision after attending tours and open houses. May also heal divisions between parents.

The start of research is up to 1 1/2 years before the school starts and parents can use ALL of that time before choosing, 40 hours in total.

12 Data Points & Research

The client provided us with high-quality data streams from 12 different, fairly standard categories related to school choice.

Classroom size
Student test scores
Graduation rate
Subjects taught
Availability of advanced courses
Extracurricular activities
Diversity
Student safety
Disability accommodations
Facilities and services
Access to transportation
Tuition

I ran a far reaching, online survey and asked parents which category of data was the most important to them in terms of choosing a school, in order to be able to prioritize design.

Student safety ranked #1.

This was followed by student test scores and graduation rates.

A Persona Emerges

By combing both qualitative and quantitative research, we created a persona. I wanted to make sure that the project had an emotional north star, going forward.

Competitive Analysis

I wanted to study three other direct competitors in the school search arena, in order to learn what worked and what didn’t from a business landscape perspective.

No other competitors seemed to focus in on safety, however Great Schools was in the process of implementing school safety ratings into their product. The results were messy.

Moscow Mapping for the MVP

My competitive analysis revealed important directions moving forward. I wanted to focus on product features that could get out the door quickly, and really test the lens of safety.

1) Refine the information architecture flow around the concept of safety.
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2) Allow for customizable and transparent metrics that are easy to interpret.
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3) Focus on public school only, since private school choice implicitly deals with safety.‍

Mid-Fi and User Tests

From the qualitative research, I found that school safety was the #1 data priority of parents. Thus, I made an onboarding function for the app were I broke down safety into different categories, physical and mental. Once a user selects the metrics important to them, they will be able to see schools rated by their personal definition of safety.

From the qualitative research, I found that all parents valued classroom size and school distance. Thus, I highlighted this data on the school search dashboard.

I tested these concepts with 5 users.

The biggest find was discovering just how controversial the topic of safety could be. Everyone seemed to define safety differently. What was beneficial to one user was viewed as harmful to another user. While I refined the over-all concept, I made sure to give users more transparency and agency into how safety would be and could be measured in the app.

Styling for Perceived Controversy

User testing relieved the very concept of school safety may be controversial, so I chose to lean into it, with the style of a serious cartoon.

The Prototype App

It’s a school search app, based around the concept of safety. Why? A safe and supportive environment is a huge factor in student academics, but everyone defines safety in different ways. As a user, after you answer a few questions, Safe & Sound will help you find the safest school for your child to attend, designed around how you define safety.

For a user, it doesn’t matter what their politics are, how old their child is, or what part of the country they live in. Everyone values safety–just in different ways.

After onboarding, when users search for schools, they can see a personalized safety rating that means more to them, since they were part of it’s creation.

And of course, as they click through the safety rating, they’ll see data about education. But it will be through their lens of safety.

The key choices made on the app's dashboard all refer back to the initial stages of research. User's can see at a glance the student teacher ratio, the commute time (based on their transportation preference) and the safety score (based on how they define safety).

This is an MVP, designed to get the product out quickly. More features and data streams can be added later, making the app more robust. But the new features will be built UP, from the ground floor, THROUGH the lens of safety, which resonates with everyone, in one way or another.

Lessons and Reflections

This project was a mixture of new learnings and new frustrations for me. I thoroughly enjoyed the research methods. Creating the affinity diagram felt very familiar. In fact, it was almost exactly like pulling selects and structuring a scene for a documentary film, something a have tons of experience with. The survey I sent out proved to be useful, as well. However, I believe I relied too much on this quantitative method, in the end.

I probably leaned too heavily on the lens of safety. Yes, safety was important to my users, but in an effort be unique, I probably emphasized safety slightly above it's proper setting. Meaning, I would have liked to have more time designing the app and exploring the concept of safety beyond simply the onboarding phase. Also, I felt a little uncomfortable drilling down into a heated political topic like school safety.

I did learn some things in the project, however. Filter, sort, search, and mapping--all good, standard issue, UX techniques that I was exposed to in this project. I'm sure it won't be the last time I employ these techniques.