KaChow ridesharing app for kid
Introducing ...
KaChow - a ride-sharing mobile app connecting kids with drivers who have childcare experience so kids will have reliable access to safer rides while drivers have wider access to other income streams.
KaChow
Project Overview
I participated in a design challenge by Iterate UX and I was randomly placed in a group of 4 to complete the design process as below:
Brainstorm
Accessibility
Research
Primary & Secondary
Solution
Kid Ridesharing App
Ideation
-
Affinity Map
-
User Personas
-
MVPs
-
User Flow
-
Wireframes
End Product
High-fidelity prototype
Testing
Card Sorting
On-demand ride-sharing app has been a rapid and convenient tool for adults who needed a ride to their desired destination. In response to the recent upscaling of ride-sharing apps in the market, the team and I figured a potential to introduce accessibility for children who needed the same service for convenience purposes.
Brief Introduction
How might we assist the under-resourced community - teachers in getting a passive income?
Problem Statement
My Role and Contribution
-
Conduct User interviews
-
Design survey questionnaire
-
Perform secondary research
-
Determine MVPs
-
Design user personas
-
Conduct usability testing
We kick-started our project from ...
1. Conduct brainstorm sessions on FigJam
Once I met up with my team members, we had our first meeting talking about our background and expertise. We decided to set up a FigJam board to vote for the most desired topic to work on.
To find out the problem statement ...
2. Research on teacher community in the United States
The team decided to look into how underserved communities like teachers in the United States struggled financially.
Image Credit: Mother Jones (2022)
i. What is the median salary of teachers in the United States as of 2022?
According to Salary.com, the median salary of different teachers in the United States as of September 2022 are:
ii. Percentage of teachers who struggled financially
In a national survey of nearly 1,200 classroom teachers conducted in the spring of 2021 by the Teacher Salary Project, a nonpartisan organization.
82% of respondents said
they either currently or previously had taken on multiple jobs to make ends meet
53% of respondents said
they were currently working multiple jobs, including 17% who held jobs unrelated to teaching
iii. The kinds of side hustle pre k-12 teachers are holding
A 2020 National Education Association survey of 1,309 public school teachers, about additional jobs worked in 2019.
47% of respondents said
they hold another position in preK-12 education
8% of respondents said
they hold a position in higher education
29% of respondents said
they hold a temporary position outside of education
14% of respondents said
they worked for gig economy position (eg: Uber)
19% of respondents said
they hold permanent position outside of education
iv. The percentage of teachers in the United States holding a second job
The most recent data made public by the NCES, drawing on surveys conducted in the 2017-18 school year, found that:
18% or about 600,000 public school teachers in the U.S. held second jobs outside the school system during the school year, making teachers about three times as likely as all U.S. workers to juggle multiple jobs at once.
We figured a clearer problem statement, which is ...
How might we design a ride-sharing service connecting kids with drivers who have childcare experience, so kids will have reliable access to safer rides while drivers (teachers) have wider access to other income streams?
Before we dive deep into the ideation process ...
We interviewed the potential users - working moms
We conducted two interviews with working moms with at least one kid in the United States to learn more about their experiences when it comes to transportation arrangements for their kids.
Christine Chen
Married with one kid (9 years old)
Full-time MBA Student; Part-time Marketing Associate
Located in Boston, MA
-
Concerns: Cares about driver’s background such as criminal record, driving record, car accident, etc.
-
Willingness: Willing to let her son start to take public transportation earliest by the age of 12 in the United States.
-
Other Findings: Will only allow her son to travel short distances independently due to safety and financial issue.
Marry Snowdall
Single mom with one kid (7 years old)
Full-time Academia Researcher
Located in Dallas, TX
-
Concerns: Cares about her son’s behavior while taking the ride. She did not want to pay for extra cleaning fees if her kid messed up the car interior.
-
Willingness: Would let her son take a private ride independently as long as the driver’s background is secure.
-
Other Findings: Used to allow her son to travel by himself from Texas to San Francisco independently.
What about the market trend? ...
What is ridesharing like for young families in the United States?
We also researched on the terms, conditions, regulations, and restrictions for the current on demand ride-sharing products and how does it work for young families in the United States.
-
Uber and Lyft require all users to be 18 or older to hail a ride without an accompanying adult (all app users have to be 18+, but unenforced)
-
Some families still discreetly use Uber and Lyft to drive their teenage children (drivers may mistake riders’ age or intentionally don’t ask)
-
Ridesharing services catering to kids and young families are available, but often only provide pre-scheduled rides as their primary or sole offering
Is there any existing ridesharing app cater for kids?
We performed a comparative analysis
We also studied the competitors in the U.S. market including the product features and their target users.
-
Key Finding 1:
Emphasis on security features to address parents’ concerns for their children’s safety. -
Key Finding 2:
Current companies offer various ride services except for on-demand ride request
Introducing a new ride-sharing app ...
KaChow (OnDemand kid-focused ride-sharing mobile app)
Meet Debbie and her daughter, Chloe ...
Semi-fictional characters (user personas)
These user personas are was constructed using primary and secondary resources (online survey & user interview, supplemented with news coverage of families' ridesharing behaviours)
Debbie; a part-time MBA student and full-time Marketing Associate
-
Currently juggling between a full-time job, studies and raising three kids together with her spouse. She is super ambitious, striving to advance her career as a Marketing Manager in the next to years at her current company.
-
Debbie has been struggling to balance her work and life due to inflexible working hours for her current job. She literally has no time to pick up her kids - Chloe from curriculum activities such as tennis class even during weekends. She felt guilty every time when she is late to pick up or drop off her daughter, at the same time, she did not want to mess up her job and studies.
Mom
Chloe; 6th grade student
-
Wish to participate in orchestra training but no one in the family could send her to music school.
-
Wanted to take public transportation such as a bus but the nearest stop is almost 2 miles away from her house and her parents do not want her to do this because they are worried about her safety.
-
She felt unhappy and often blame her working parents for not being able to spare time for her interests and hobbies.
Child
Let's dive deep into the ideation process ...
The prioritized features list (Minimum Viable Products)
Based on the affinity mapping outcomes, we obtained a better understanding of the product roadmap and how could we include the information to the MVP to solve the design challenges.
What do we learn from affinity mapping?
Idea translation process
Here are the key findings we obtained after the affinity mapping activity. We figured these are the key features we have to include to the product.
1️⃣ Driver's Background
2️⃣ Last-min cancellation
3️⃣ Trust issues
4️⃣ Ride status update
5️⃣ Safety issues
We started making the ideas work ...
Translate research outcomes in designing ideas by creating a user flow
Before we look into wireframes, we need user flows as a guideline to systemize the ideas and evaluate if the flow archive the project goals.
Once user flow is finalized ...
We began to look into wireframes design
The team sat down together and talked about how we plan to realize the project goals into the user interface design. We make sure the wireframes include all the impacts we wanted to integrate to solve user's problems.
✨ Let's take a look at how Ka-Chow solves the tension between Debbie and Chloe ✨
Debbie booked a ride for one of her kids - Chloe
-
Debbie book a ride for one of her kids - Chloe who wants to go to music school.
-
She inserted a safety word where Chloe would remember and she can say it to the driver later to make sure she is hopping on the right car.
-
Live location feature is available for Debbie to track her kid's location.
Safety Features
Now, Chloe needs her mom's permission to book a ride home
-
Chloe wants to go home after her music lesson, she open the app and requested a ride home.
-
Request will be sent to Debbie to make sure she is aware of Chloe's whereabouts.
-
Once request is approved, Chloe receives information about her ride. for eg: car plate number, driver's name, and safety word.
Eases Trust Issue
User Testing with kid ...
Card-sorting with Murphy ✨👩💻
I organized a cart-sorting session with Murphy who is currently 9 years old attending elementary school in Boston. Based on the activity, we get to test how a kid responding to the user interface.
I was a narrative sitting besides Murphy asking him a couple of question and let him choose the card that makes the best sense to him based on the questions below while his mom sitting next to him helping him label the cards.
Here are the questions:
-
What do you do if you wish to go home?
-
What do you do if want to go to school?
-
What do you do if you want to go to tennis club?
-
What do you do if you need to book a new ride?
-
How do you inform your mom when your ride is here?
-
How do you go back to the home page?
The testing results showed that Murphy (9 years old) has a very good understanding in the current user interface and he mentioned it's not a problem for him to book a ride by himself with his own smartphone.
Reflections
If I were given more time for this project, I would like to do more card-sorting exercise with different kids from different age groups. I personally think its crucial to measure the level of understanding in the user interface design from kid's perspectives. Card-sorting exercise is such a good metrics to evaluate if there's necessary iteration to the user interface and content hierarchy, as well as understand the level of willingness of kids independently taking a ride by themselves. Of course, this exercise would be more time-consuming and require more resources.