Pocket Pad

Facilitating emotional and casual interactions between young working children and their aging parents to produce mutual feelings of support and encouragement.

Academic

10 weeks

Mobile & Hardware

Accessibility, Social Impact

Pocket Pad

Facilitating emotional and casual interactions between young working children and their aging parents to produce mutual feelings of support and encouragement.

Academic

10 weeks

Mobile & Hardware

Accessibility, Social Impact

Pocket Pad

Facilitating emotional and casual interactions between young working children and their aging parents to produce mutual feelings of support and encouragement.

Academic

10 weeks

Mobile & Hardware

Accessibility, Social Impact

Overview

This project was completed as part of my HCDE 518 User Centered Design class at the University of Washington. Over the past 10-weeks, I collaborated with a team of UX Researchers and Designers to address the issue of communication gap between aging parents and their working children.

Outcome

A hardware-software integrated communication product designed for both children and parents, enabling users to interact in a warmer and more personal way, fostering closer connections.

My Role

User Research

Ideation & Storyboarding

Wireframing

Prototyping

Usability Testing

Designers

Yuri Kawada

Gily Yu

Yit Chung

Yechan Choi

Tools

FigJam

Figma

Timeline

10 weeks

Background

Working children and aging parents face challenges in maintaining deep, emotional connections due to time constraints and technological barriers.

With an aging population and an increasing life expectancy worldwide, along with rising living and insurance costs, families spend less and less time with each other. Aging seniors also face increasing reports of loneliness, which greatly affects quality of life and family connections. Specifically, working children and parents face a dilemma: working children cannot afford the time to keep in touch with their parents, and aging parents face tech-illiterate, particularly in the 75+ age demographic.

It was with these concerns that we created the Pocket Pad, a two-device solution designed to connect aging parents and working children when obligations can make creating or maintaining an emotional connection otherwise difficult.

Discover

Understanding the gaps between aging parents and working children

Since the problem area was quite broad, we narrowed down our focus and ensure our direction had a potential market through secondary research, survey, and user interviews. We began with the question:

How can we facilitate interactions between young working children and their aging parents?

Secondary Research

Found 6 relevant papers and over 7 online forums, indicating how children and parents perceive communication and ways to improve long distance relationships.

Survey

Created a 20-question survey to better understand the relationship between working children and aging parents. With 60 responses, most participants were in their 20s, working full-time, and living independently from their parents.

User Interviews

Conducted semi-structured interviews with 5 working children and 4 parents to understand how they stay connected despite their work commitments, long distances, and past experiences.

User Personas

Developed personas based on the two primary stakeholder groups, working children and aging parents.

Discover

Synthesizing research findings

Following our user research, we were able to cross-reference the insights to validate a well-rounded understanding of both user groups.

Working children often feel a sense of obligation and responsibility, viewing their relationship with their parents as a way to give back for their upbringing.

Friction often arises between children and parents, with emotional barriers leading to surface-level interactions and a lack of deeper connection.

A yearn for closeness exists for both working children and aging parents. Participants on both ends mentioned that closeness was important.

We observed a correlation between gender and conversation topics, suggesting a deeper relationship that requires further research and a larger sample size to fully understand.

Parents expressed missing in-person gatherings and interactions with their children.

65% of adult children mentioned day-to-day activities as a topic of interest when calling their parents.

Define

Defining our design question

The key challenge identified from our research was:

How might we facilitate emotional and casual interactions between young working children and their aging parents, enabling them to enjoy shared activities that foster mutual support and encouragement?

To develop a product that effectively supports these emotional and casual interactions, it was essential to first define the roles of the two unique stakeholders in the user stories.

Amy, 35

As a dentist and soon-to-be mother, I want to communicate more meaningfully and spontaneously with my parents so I can strengthen our relationship, share experiences, and build family traditions without the need for scheduled calls.

Alex, 25

As a Social Media Coordinator living alone, I want to engage in more casual, stress-free conversations with my parents so I can maintain a supportive connection, stay updated on their lives, and share activities even from a distance.

Alex, 78

As a retired teacher living alone, I want to stay connected with my children and share in their day-to-day lives so I can feel closer to them and maintain a sense of closeness despite the physical distance.

Develop

Establishing our design goals

Deriving from our research, we set characteristics and requirements that our solution could provide for parents and children before diving into our ideation and sketching phase.

Parents

The design should provide low-tech accessibility for aging parents

The solution should create instant gratification to keep aging parents engaged.

The design should account for different sensory experiences as parents’ senses deteriorate over time.

Shared Goals

The design should create genuineness and authenticity in everyday interactions.

The design should create a long-distance support system that both children and parents can rely on.

The design should build opportunities for personalization in frequency of communication whilst promoting activity sharing to generate closer bonds.

The design should allow the user to sense the other’s presence and feel a passive connection even without continuous communication.

Working Children

The design should facilitate casual conversations to build comfortable bonds that don’t feel awkward.

The design should accommodate tech-savvy children who use their phones on a daily basis

The solution should require low-effort as working children are often busy and won’t realistically alter their schedules.

Develop

Ideation and Sketching

In brainstorming our ideas, we utilized the crazy 6 method where we gave ourselves 6 minutes to sketch an idea per minute. After discussing and sharing our ideas on FigJam, everyone got to use stickers to vote anonymously on which ideas we want to go forward with.

After discussing the feasibility of each idea…

We decided to move forward with Pocket Note concept as all of us are international students and living apart from our family. We relate to this concept on a personal level and felt strongly that this design can foster genuine and authentic communication between aging parents and working children on an emotional level, which aligns with our design question.

Parents crave for heartfelt, personal messages, while children don't have the time. This low-effort pocket-sized device allows users to handwrite sticky note-sized messages and share photos of daily activities, bridging the gap between aging parents and working children. It can also further develop motivation and engagement including gamification. This concept is feasible, supported by 3D modeling, design, and usability testing tailored to both user groups.

Develop

Visualizing our user experience

This user flow combines the 3 user flows we made before iterating and creating the final design. This user flow accurately describes how the user would navigate the final Pocket Pad.

Develop

Key features in the Pocket Pad

We highlighted the Pocket Pad’s core features to ensure a meaningful experience for both aging parents and tech-savvy children. We specifically focused on simplicity and accessibility.

Pocket Pad for Parents

Lightweight and Simple Features

Focuses on two essential functions: sending messages and taking photos. Its intuitive interface and pop-up instructions ensure easy, low-effort use with minimal learning curve.

Accessible Design for Parents

The Pocket Pad includes speaker icons and text-labeled buttons for clear functionality, making it more accessible for all users. Our user interviews revealed that tech literacy varies among aging parents, so we’ve prioritized simple, intuitive features to ensure accessibility.

Shared Features

Handwritten Message Function

The Pocket Pad enables handwritten messaging, making communication more personal and heartfelt. Recipients can feel the care and warmth conveyed through the handwriting, with users in usability testing expressing how it adds a more personal touch compared to texting.

Prompt Suggestions

Offers thoughtful conversation prompts to bridge generational gaps, helping families find meaningful topics to share. User interviews revealed that some children find it difficult or awkward to initiate conversations, so these prompts aim to provide common ground for both parents and children.

Signal Notification through Pocket Pen

The pen glows with an orange light to notify users of incoming messages, fostering a sense of closeness and care.

Pocket Pad for Working Children

Widget Design on iPhone

Designed for tech-savvy working children, it integrates into their routines, making it easy to stay connected with family through a familiar interface.

Design

Feedback from our Low-Fidelity

After creating our low-fidelity wireframes, we conducted usability testing with both working children and parents. We discovered that users were confused about who they were sending a note to, as the “Send to” screen appeared only after they finished writing their message. Working children also shared their challenges about managing an additional device to their already existing phones, given their busy lives. This led us to the question:

How might we better streamline the Pocket Pad to minimize confusion and integrate seamlessly into the busy lives of working children?

Design

Usability Testing from Mid-fidelity to High-Fidelity

In making design changes in our mid-fidelity, we decided to create a physical device for the accessibility in elderly parents and an additional plug-in extension application in the iPhone for the working children who are tech savvy. As a result, usability testing was conducted on 2 parents and 3 working children. After synthesizing, we made the following changes to our designs, which helped us finalize our high-fidelity prototype.

The Pocket Pad Device on Parent

Results indicated that the personalized emoji feature was unimportant to users, so the design was refreshed to utilize default iOS emojis (with a library already familiar with users).

Usability testing with parents revealed some confusion and difficulty on initial startup and the prompts screen. We’ve addressed these issues by adding hints and instructions throughout the design and making the prompt cards more visually accessible.

The Pocket Pad on iPhone for the Working Child

Working children (during testing) echoed similar remarks on the emoji feature from the parent group. However, users indicated high empathy for the prompts feature, so we decided to emphasize it throughout our design - and keep the prompts dialogue consistent between both parent and child flows.

One key point during our usability testing was that working children had difficulty finding the “happy path”. The initial home screen was confusing to users, and when asked to describe what they were looking at, many believed the photo and notes sections weren’t separate. We addressed these by adding hints throughout the design and cleaning up the designs to make decisions more clear.

Design

Hardware and Technical Specifications

In thinking about the physical Pocket Pad device, we have also 3D modeled our device in real dimensions.

Design Item 1: Phone Case

In modeling our 3D Pocket Pad Phone Case, we started to think about how the pen could be attached to the phone. We decided it would be easy to incorporate it on the phone case, which the security of the pen is guaranteed and children don’t have to worry about misplacing it. The material also creates for a seamless finish that isn’t bulky.

Design Item 2: Pen

The pen is designed with a crevice that fits the pocket pad perfectly. The pen is also designed to be thin to slip into plastic cover of the phone case. The circular shape at the top of the pen is designed for the user to easily take out and slip it back into the case. When a message is received, the circular tip of the pen glows to notify the user.

Design Item 3: Pocket Pad

The Pocket Pad resembles a kindle and an iPhone. It utilizes concrete materials that creates a sturdy and slim product, easy to slip into the pocket and take on the go. The dimensions of the pad mimics a small sticky note and it works well to host simple features. The steel hinge also allows it to open and close easily.

Retrospective

Impact & Takeaways

In 10 weeks, we collaborated to produce an innovative way to connect families across both distances and work commitments. We believe we have made something remarkable that could really address a problem that affects families across the US.

We received largely positive feedback from user testing from both parents and children, and have indicated promise towards utilizing our concept. That is not to say that there aren’t issues with the design we’d like to improve, if given the time. User testing showed that emojis were not as important as we’d originally thought, for instance, but utilizing them to produce something relatable for both users (an inside joke, for example) showed interest among our user group. For the future, we’d like to see this idea better implemented, and measure if the feature could be retooled to empathize better with users.

For our future scope, we’d like to recommend exploring the aging parent-working child relationship to extend to logistics, feasibility, and a solidified idea on how our concept could benefit families across oceans as a tool to keep them connected.

Next steps and improvements:

Creating more features for the tech-savvy working children to use, some people mentioned the idea of a live photo or implementing video taking features.
Utilize the notepad function to create other features such as note taking and making to-do lists.
Implement the same solution on a device at home or at work, such as a refrigerator.
Simplify the process even more- what if the prompt idea could be translated into emotion cards that can be used to quickly show emotion?
Utilize buttons that have “depth”.

In 10 weeks, we collaborated to produce an innovative way to connect families across both distances and work commitments. We believe we have made something remarkable that could really address a problem that affects families across the US.

We received largely positive feedback from user testing from both parents and children, and have indicated promise towards utilizing our concept. That is not to say that there aren’t issues with the design we’d like to improve, if given the time. User testing showed that emojis were not as important as we’d originally thought, for instance, but utilizing them to produce something relatable for both users (an inside joke, for example) showed interest among our user group. For the future, we’d like to see this idea better implemented, and measure if the feature could be retooled to empathize better with users.

For our future scope, we’d like to recommend exploring the aging parent-working child relationship to extend to logistics, feasibility, and a solidified idea on how our concept could benefit families across oceans as a tool to keep them connected.

Next steps and improvements:

Creating more features for the tech-savvy working children to use, some people mentioned the idea of a live photo or implementing video taking features.
Utilize the notepad function to create other features such as note taking and making to-do lists.
Implement the same solution on a device at home or at work, such as a refrigerator.
Simplify the process even more- what if the prompt idea could be translated into emotion cards that can be used to quickly show emotion?
Utilize buttons that have “depth”.