Single Mothers
A case study of creating a website for single mothers, and how to help them earn a better income.
Single mothers don’t have a lot of free time to do the things they want. Typically they work full time with a couple kids to take care of, and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for them to do anything other than work and take care of their family. Going back to school is a common goal of most single mothers, and with this product, we wanted to make this goal as easy as possible!
Our Assumptions and pre conceived ideas
Our first step in this process was listing out assumptions of what we thought we knew about single mothers. We considered the struggles and challenges they face, and then we challenged each one with an anti-assumption.
Survey and Interviews
The next step in our research was to create a survey and several interview questions, this is what we would use to make our persona. We made a goal to interview three people, preferably single mothers or someone who knew a single mother. We did this so that we could fully understand single mothers’ situations. We also wanted to see how they live, and after some thought, my team and I came up with the following questions to ask in our interview:
- How many kids do you have? How old are they?
- How would you describe your average day?
- What takes up most of your time during the day?
- Do you feel like you have a lot of free time? Why or Why not?
- How do you feel about working and being a single parent?
- What advice would you have for other single parents?
- What do you think is the single biggest challenge facing single parents today?
After gathering all of the responses and data from our interviews, it was time to go through and find commonalities and similar issues
- Getting up super early for to send kids off to school/get chores done
- Trying to coordinate with friends and family to watch after kids
- working long hours at a job to make ends meet
- feels like resources are limited
My team then took all of these similarities and created a persona of a single mother named Susan. A 35 year old divorced mom with three kids, who worked a full time job trying to support her family. Susan’s desire was to go back to school to finish her degree, earn a better income, and have more free time and consistency with her schedule. My team wanted to make this persona so we could have all of her similarities in one place and keep things simple and organized.
Creating the structure of the product
Having our persona created, our next process for my team was to create a user story map. A journey of our user Susan and her process of going through our product. This is also where we can get the flow of what we want to have in our website, basing on the steps Susan would take to reach her goal of going back to school. Having the persona put up in the corner, we wrote down on sticky notes the key goals of Susan.
- Find education opportunities that correspond with schedule
- Find jobs/programs related to strengths and interests
- Reach out to other users
From our goals we created a narrative of what Susan would do to pursue those goals, and from that, each of the tasks that she would do from start to finish.
Story Mapping
As part of our user story map, we decided what the “minimum viable product” would be in the case of the website we were designing. Some of the struggles that my team was faced with while in this phase was defining what the product that we were creating should entail of. Specifically, my first initial thought was to create a website that was simply a resource center. A place where single parents could find job/education opportunities, daycare centers, babysitters, and so on. All of these extra features seemed to take away from our main goal. Our bottom line was helping single mothers get back into school so they could earn a better income, so it was decided to put the big focus on that.
In the end, what was agreed on after discussing things over the story map, was a website where a single parent could find educational programs and schools that fit their needs and interests. Also while having the ability to reach out to other users. She would also be able to leave reviews, and have a blog page where they could find different insights on what other single parents go through.
Wireframing and prototyping
The 4th step in our process was conducting a card sort and wireframing. And to get the layout and visual flow of our website.
Conducting the card sort helped with the specifics of what elements would be in each page. We learned where some of the elements and tabs should be located, what our landing page should have in the navigation bar and how the user would signup or login.
We created as many wireframes as possible. My team and I brainstormed what elements would go where, as well as defined what call to actions would be on each view. Wrestling with the idea of having a way to message other users and connect with others was a struggle. We wanted our main focus of the product to be Susans goal of going back to school and not create another “social media” app where you could casually message others. In the end it was decided to keep the messaging feature because in our persona of Susan, she still wanted a way to relate with people.
With the time restraints that were in place, there was not a lot of time to get more than a few people to test the website. But what little I did do was extremely valuable. In our first iteration of wireframes, I had the “explore page” which was the way that the user could browse and view schools just as a simple list view of programs, and having nothing more on that page other than a search feature. I already felt that the page was a little bare bones, and the feedback that I received confirmed that, I proposed a more intuitive way of searching by moving the filters from a top scroll bar (where many of them were hidden) and moved them all to the side to where they all could be visible.
Creating High fidelity screens and the visual elements.
Having a general idea of what our website would consist of and look like, I jumped right into making the high fidelity mockup of Belay.com. This is where I could really focus on the details, visuals and functionality. One of my first hang ups when starting was deciding the tone of what the website would convey. Specifically, what colors I wanted to use. My initial idea was having a really calming green and sky blue to convey the feeling of regrowth. Starting anew with the green hue, and a calming vibe with the blue.
After some exploring with the color palette that I decided on, I realized the green that I selected was too light to have in more that a few places. It was extremely pastel and light to use as a call to action, or a text color. I didn’t think a deep green would set a good tone with our persona of Susan, so I decided to just have a couple shades of blue to keep my calming vibe going. And from the feedback I received, it confirmed that the right choice was made.
What I’ve learned
What I took away from this particular project was, you can’t just jump right into building an app or website.
Without some careful planning and research, you won’t have any connection with your users. You are not designing for yourself, but for the user in mind.
The testing I did really gave me more insight than I would have imagined. At the time I didn’t think it would make much of a difference, since they were such minor changes. But small changes add up and make a world of difference in the end.
Going back to our problem of helping single mothers earn a better income. Our interviews showed that most single mothers would like a way to go back to school so as to make a better life for them and their family. So in providing a way for all single mothers to easily be able to get back into school, my team and I were able to contribute to an often overlooked community of people and make a difference. However small it may be.
There is a beginning process that needs to be addressed before creating a “million dollar” looking website. The structure of a website needs to have the goals of the user, or persona, as the focus and all the basics covered. Have empathy with your user and you’ll be able to create something worthwhile!
