Time for kids

My core interest was to understand how parents of small kids cope with everyday time schedule. My target audience were parents of small kids, roughly, younger than 10, that are highly depend on their parents in common daily activities. As a parent of two kids of that age: 5 and 8, I can admit that my morning usually looks like this:

It’s not an easy job to get ready for the day myself, help two kids to get ready for school, pack two lunchboxes and all that in one hour! Technically kids of that age are capable of brushing teeth and getting dressed by themselves, but every parent knows, that it does not always work that way, they need our presence, guidance and encouragement!

I talked to other parents to find out their life hacks. That’s what I found:

This is wall clock in kid’s room. Time is marked directly on clock face. Kids must be ready to leave the room when small hand reaches the black line. These kids can’t read the clock, but they can understand the sign and it works for them. Especially because, the one who is not ready at time wouldn’t have time for breakfast, plain and simple:)!

I also saw this:,

and learned that keeping track and having graphic representation of their activities is rewarding for kids. It gives them sense of control over the situation, autonomy and competence

Design problem

It is hard and stressful for kids to fit in strict time schedule of commitments and errands, we imposed on them. Sometimes parents need to put a great deal of pressure to get them to cooperate.

Ideation

I assumed that kids basically want to cooperate and aspire for independence; they just have limited understanding of time and limited planning skills. Let’s put technology on service and help kids make this world more friendly, comprehensible and playful. With a bit of our help they can overcome their natural limitations and achieve more independence, self-confidence, control.

Evolution

Almost immediately I had an idea to design an interconnected app and kids smart watch. App allows the parent to help the child in planning his daily routine and controls the behavior of the watch. Watch, utilizes the programmed routines and uses graphic interface to visualize the time and errands. It also sends feedback to the app and allows to check and visualize progress for different goals.

Evolution of watch interface

For small kids, that can’t read the regular clock yet, time is represented graphically. There is only one arrow and it remains static at the middle of the clock face, as the clock face gradually moves up at a regular time pace. Only the closets to “now” events are exposed, thus helping the kid to stay in focus (roughly five hours).

Events are represented by color strips and graphic icons. The thickness of the strip matches the duration of the event.

As the kid grows, the watch grows with him and digits can be added to the display

User testing

Users provided precious feedback and helped me to understand better the inner structure and functionality of the app. This is the final revision by now:

Conclusion

A lot of work still need to be done, especially with testing the watch interface. The concept of the watch is not trivial and need to be tested on kids to ensure that they will really develop better sense of time with this watch. I was struggling for intuitive understanding and fun of using!

Thanks to Coursera and classmates, from whom I learned the most.