Helping Au Pairs plan appropriate activities for their host kids
Timeline: June 2023 - January 2024
My role: Solo Student Project for Springboard UI/UX bootcamp
Tools used: Figma and FigJam
Problem
Even though Au Pairs have a basic knowledge of child development, they can struggle to plan age-appropriate activities for their host kids.
As a former Au Pair myself, I realized that coming to another country, speaking a second language, and living with a host family can be challenging enough.
However, au pairs can encounter more struggles when it comes to their main job—host kids! Planning activities for those little ones can be quite challenging in their daily work routine. (and yes, I did face that struggle as well!)
How Might We
Enhance the Au Pairs’s knowledge when it comes to kids’ growth phases and Milestones?
Collaborate with Au Pairs so they can avoid frustrations at the end?
Help Au Pairs feel confident that they are doing a good job?
Solution
Leaning about kids and having access to activities easily
is essential
Finding activities easily and learning their benefits
Enables Au Pairs to mark materials for the activities they already have.
The Actitivies screen includes a feature where they can see the benefits of that specific activity for the host kid.
Search for activities based on age, interests, season, and other categories.
Seeing that not being accepted by the host kids was one of the challenges for Au Pairs; I conducted interviews with 7 girls who were more than 5 months in the exchange program and were responsible for more than one host kid - different ages was ideal!
I focused my questions on planning age-appropriate activities and designed them to include the interviewer’s answers in the survey.
Having access to Milestones
Allows Au Pairs to see their host kids' milestones and check when a milestone is reached.
Provides milestones for other ages in case Au Pairs go through a rematch with a new family, the host mom is pregnant, or Au Pairs are just curious about different ages.
Research
Feeling overwhelmed, not being accepted by the host kids, and encountering problems with the host parents are some of the challenges Au Pairs may struggle with
I knew a little bit about the Au Pair world as I experienced it myself for two years. During the secondary research, I aimed to learn more about what is out there, their motivations, and struggles.
What I found out is that many of the challenges they face can be related to the host family.
User Interviews
The goals are to have productive hours at work and increase kids’ learning.
The Key Findings
Au Pairs tend to follow patterns both before and during the planning activities, experiencing common pain points
I collected all data from the interviews and contextual examination into an Affinity Map to form insights and
brainstorm ideas.
The first thing is to check the weather before planning any activity.
All responses to the worst-case scenarios were when the kids were not interested in the activity planned.
Au Pairs likes to organize the activities in folders and it is one of the reasons they use the same platform.
Major Insights
Theme 1: Activities
They search the activities almost in the same way: according to the age, season, interests, and items they have at home.
Theme 2: Skill Development
Au pairs have basic knowledge about the kid's phase and they search for a lot of information on the internet and books.
They find the lack of all the information be available for them in one place
Adding Reviews clues and Levels
Placing “reviews” under the star icon helps the user identify what that means.
Since some users saw the star as the level of difficulty, I added the levels of the activity
as well.
They usually don’t spend a lot of time planning.
Developing host kids’ skills while making sure they are doing a good job is the goal.
Theme 3: Preferences
Au Pairs Personas
Based on the Au Pairs' backgrounds, they tend to look at the host kid differently.
After conducting interviews, I observed that some Au Pairs have a background in child development while others do not, and this difference affects their approach to activity planning.
Testing + Improvements
Main Improvements after usability testing
After working on my high-fidelity prototypes for almost two weeks, I discovered that usability testing was my favorite part of the whole process!!
I iterated the design over three different testing phases: Guerrilla Usability Testing (sketches), and the first and second usability testing (with high-fidelity prototypes). Here are the 3 main improvements I made:
Past Activities
Based on guerrilla feedback, users wanted to have a feature where they could track activities they had already done.
Before it was placed under the tab “Me”.
During usability testing, Au Pairs had the first action to look for Past activities under the
tab “Activities”.
Tweaking words in the Kids menu & Choosing the host kids that will do
the activity
Based on Au Pairs feedback, completing the task to find their host kids information was confusing and they always ended up clicking about other ages' information.
For checking milestones, Au Pairs are able to choose the kids that will do the activities and if reaching a milestone, the kid's profile will update automatically.
Design Evaluation
Overall, the users had a positive experience with the app, providing good feedback on how it would assist them in their daily work with host kids.
For the usability test, it was conducted remotely with 10 Au Pairs and former Au Pairs all across the United States, Brazil, and even France (Oui 🇫🇷).
“Sometimes the au pairs don’t know what to do with their host kids, or, sometimes they don’t realize the importance they have in these kids’ lives.”
Final Screens
Interactive Prototype
If I had additional time, I would
Create a user flow for creating a new activity. Many Au Pairs from both usability tests requested the feature of creating a new app and sharing it with the host parents and other Au Pairs.
Gamification. I really want to transform the activities into a “game” for Au Pairs. They can track their goals, earn points with each activity, and achieve milestones with the host kid. I would love to explore in-depth how this would work. The reason for creating something like this is to help Au Pairs feel confident since many struggle with incentives from the host family.
Iterate, iterate, iterate: I learned so much from the usability testing that I would like to iterate much more to make the Nurture app a great experience for Au Pairs. They should feel understood and supported, knowing that the app was designed with intention.
Conclusion + Learning
This was my first-ever UX project (YAY 🎉). I can’t express how grateful I am to have learned about the entire UX process and to understand more about my users, Au Pairs.
I can’t thank my mentor enough for guiding me throughout the project, as well as the amazing Au Pairs who took a little bit of their time to help me. I'm truly grateful for the opportunity to meet them.
Here are a few things I've learned:
I learned that I can be wrong with my assumptions, and I felt good. Initially, I thought users would easily find past activities under the 'Me' section and that changing languages on the Home Screen would be challenging to understand. However, I was wrong! 95% of users immediately discovered the ability to change languages on the home screen, while none could figure out where to find past activities
My biggest lesson: 4 in 10 Au Pairs take care of a kid with special needs.
I had a wonderful time as an Au Pair (and believe me, I took care of 5 kids), but during the interviews + tests I had the opportunity to learn so much more about my users, and I was surprised by the amount of Au Pairs that take care of kids with special needs.
That is why I placed a section for special needs in activities. These users need a lot of help and assistance.Monetization: This is something that crossed my mind frequently during this project, especially since one of the mentors questioned me about it. How could I help Au Pairs in their daily lives while also benefiting the business? Maybe through a subscription model? Perhaps by providing direct links to materials from Amazon? Ideas are welcome for the next versions.
