BullyEnd
The App to Stop School Bullying
Si quieres leerlo en español pulsa aquí
Let’s set the stage:
The bootcamp begins, I don’t know anyone, and the only thing I know is that this UX Design thing is giving me really good vibes… We haven’t even been in class for a week, and we already have a new challenge to tackle:
How can we stop bullying?
I doubt anyone reading this hasn’t had a close encounter with this type of violence; it’s a very sensitive issue for society because it has affected all of us in one way or another. The complexity of the problem raised many questions for the team, so we got to work…
We had 5 days to complete our first Design Sprint, full of excitement, and many doubts as well. The team didn’t know each other at all, but we quickly created a great atmosphere and trust, making teamwork much more enjoyable.
First, we need to understand the problem 🧘🏽♀️
On the first day, we spent hours discussing the issue and realized that bullying isn’t just a kid’s problem; it happens everywhere and at all ages, like workplace bullying or mobbing.
We decided to break out those colorful post-its we’d been eager to use and started taking the first steps:
- We conducted Sprint Questions, filling the whiteboard with all our doubts to organize the mess in our heads.
- We created the User Journey, which helped us refocus on the user whenever our egos got in the way.
- We formulated How Might We…? questions, turning our doubts into a roadmap towards solutions.
When we finished, we democratically voted on our ideas to define our new challenge:
How can we achieve smooth communication between the psychologist, family, victim, and school?
Time to brainstorm! 💡
But first, a bit of research
After defining the final challenge, the team delved into what has been created so far, what technologies are available, how other companies are doing it… In short, a full-on benchmark.
All the information gathered was explained to the rest of the group to ensure that EVERYONE had the most knowledge possible about the topic.
Each team member grabbed pen and paper and started developing their idea through four sketches that captured its essence. We did a crazy 8 when we felt creativity was stalling, and once completed, they were displayed in the Art Museum, where the team would anonymously vote for their favorite.
This is the beauty of the Design Sprint, which as Raúl Marín says, is a “trouble deactivator.” My idea wasn’t chosen, but that’s okay because the team’s goal is to help the user and provide the closest solution to their problems, so there’s no room for egos here!
To make sure the entire group fully understood the idea, we created a storyboard featuring Julia, a girl who suffers from school bullying.
And that’s how BullyEnd was born, an application that connects all those involved in children’s care (parents/school/psychologists) to ensure smoother communication and keep everyone informed about the situation.
Shaping it: The Prototype 📲
The final result is a simple app since it will be used by people of all ages, so it needs to be intuitive and familiar. To understand the app well, we created two flows:
Flow 1: Victim
- When the child feels anxious or bullied, they send an alert through BullyEnd, which reaches their psychologist via the app.
- This action is triggered by holding down the button for a few seconds, where they are redirected to a chat. This also serves as a poka-yoke to prevent false alerts.
- At the same time, the student has access to a mood tracker, where they can define how they feel every day according to the colors green (happy), yellow (okay), and red (bad).
Flow 2: Psychologist
- They receive an alert that a patient is experiencing stress or bullying, and the app sends a notification so they can contact them.
- On the home screen, the specialist will have metrics on the alerts they receive weekly, patient reports, and appointments with the other parties involved.
- In each patient’s profile, they can view their moodboard progress, spotting patterns in their emotional state and progress. They will also have access to their clinical and contact information.
Final Step: User and Expert Testing 🧠
It was time to test BullyEnd, so it was tested by three clinical psychologists, a former victim of school bullying, and a mother.
They all affirmed that communication between parents, schools, and psychologists was terrible, with the main communication channels being WhatsApp, phone calls, or email.
“Often, schools neglect the victim because it’s not in their interest to expel several students” — Former Bullying Victim.
“Communication between parents, psychologists, and schools is non-existent; it works like a broken telephone, where information arrives late and poorly” — Clinical Psychologist.
“For educational professionals and psychologists, it’s hard to keep an eye on all the victims while completing their workday” — Educational Psychologist.
App Feedback
After long discussions with each tester, we reached several conclusions that will help us iterate this project to get closer to the desired goal.
With all this information gathered and synthesized, we came to the following conclusions:
- The usability tests were very successful; they found the app very intuitive and perfectly understood how each section or element worked. They felt very familiar with this type of design as it followed the pattern of most apps they use daily.
- The alerts are very intrusive: most psychologists are overwhelmed with work and wouldn’t be able to attend to all their patients every time they receive an alert. Also, they have the right to rest outside their working hours or on vacation.
- BullyEnd’s usefulness entirely depends on the involvement of all parties; if any of them fails or shows no interest, it would be impossible to improve communication as it would be incomplete.
- The mood tracker was very well received by users, but they believe that only three emotions are too few; children have thousands of feelings a day, and we can’t reduce it to just that.
Future Steps
Design is about iterating and iterating and iterating… You never reach the perfect result because there’s always something to improve. Therefore, after analyzing the results, we believe that BullyEnd would be better if:
- We focus on developing a more diverse and effective mood tracker, with the option to add notes, like a sort of diary.
- We restrict alerts to extreme cases or limit their hours.
- We add the option for parents and teachers to receive alerts, as they are closer to the victim and can act faster.
- We extend the project to other issues like eating disorders, depression, anxiety…
End of My First Design Sprint
It’s a methodology I really enjoyed; I loved how quickly we worked, how we didn’t overthink things, just did and tested them (and if they failed, no worries, it was only 5 days!). At first, it was very difficult to trust that an idea would come from a few questions, but we did it. It’s been a pleasure working with this team and a joy to learn from each of them.
Thanks for reading! Until next time 👋🏼
