Designing a COVID-Safe Return to School
Project Overview:
In 2020, my team worked on designing a COVID functionality for Jiobit’s existing child-tracking device/platform. Our proposed solution is a an app extension that provides easy monitoring of kids and communication between parents and teachers in a busy school setting.
The Prompt:
Jiobit, a start-up primarily focused on allowing parents to track their kids’ location, tasked us with designing an extension to their product line that provided more functionality in a pandemic. We were free to target a new customer base or scenario, as long as it gave their products more relevance during COVID-19.
The Research:
SYNTHESIS
In our initial stages of exploring Jiobit’s product and assessing its role in a pandemic, we synthesized general interviewee concerns to 4 major COVID concerns on the left. From preliminary interviews, we found that people were concerned by their kids lack of social interaction and how that affected their learning. Since parents were generally eager to send their kids back to school, we saw potential in Jiobit designing for the back-to-school scenario.
PERSONAS
After identifying the design space, we narrowed in on our key user and stakeholder. Since the school-going scenario involves a child going from home to school, we believed the communication and awareness of the parent and teacher were key to this design.
JOURNEY MAP
We thus mapped the school-going experience of the child by overlapping both the parent’s and teacher’s point of view, all the way from waking up to riding on the bus back home.
This map helped identify the various touchpoints of the child’s journey, as well as notice any key moments when the child could be in fear of contracting COVID-19.
PAIN POINTS
We used the previous journey map to synthesize 4 key pain points, shows on the left. These dictated our ideation and prototyping direction.
The Final Solution:
Our proposed solution for Jiobit was a mobile app connected to Jiobit’s child-tracker device that notifies parents on the kid’s whereabouts within/outside the school, and helps teachers monitor several Jiobit trackers simultaneously and ensure kid are following COVID-appropriate protocol.
Takeaways:
Journey Maps: Start a rough one early and continue to iterate so you can repeatedly validate them in user interviews
App Design: Reach out to your client early so you can access their design systems and avoid starting from scratch