KidVid
KidVid’s mission is to offer children around the world the opportunity to share their skills and talents; to feed their innate curiosity, and support their desire to learn about their peers around the globe. In doing so, we strive to enable them to become empathetic, culturally aware, digitally able and empowered citizens.
What is KidVid?
- KidVid is a peer-to-peer video sharing service dedicated to youths sharing their skills and talents across the globe.
- Kids can publish their own how-to video tutorials. These videos are then prescreened for safety, translated into multiple languages, and categorized into subjects.
- KidVid users can learn new skills, languages, feel empowered and ultimately learn about each other.
Objectives:
- To conduct user research to find out the concerns of parents.
- Build a universal design that will accommodate multiple languages.
- Design a product that addresses parents concerns, and kids natural curiosity.
Why KidVid?
When it comes to educational companies who provide learning content the market is reaching the point of saturation. Among the Udemy, PluralSight, Skillshare, Udacity, and Coursera’s of the world, there is no shortage of online educational content.
However, if you search for videos geared towards youth you will find a very slim market. Most of the companies providing content are attached to known schools and require some sort of enrollment. Also, they are designed by educators with specific objectives in mind. I wanted a service that allowed the kids themselves to do the educating. A place where kids were teaching each other and solving problems together.
Research:
I started my research looking for data about children's safety online. A study conducted by ESET (a leader in threat detection software) Asked parents via surveys: “What specifically concerns you when your child accesses the internet on a smartphone or tablet?”
According to this survey, the most common concerns among parents are:
- 81% worry about their children visiting inappropriate web pages;
- 71% are concerned about their kids giving their personal details to strangers online;
- 61% worried that their children spend too much with the device.
I interviewed parents in person and their responses to similar questions were in line with the ESET survey. Talking one-on-one with parents gave me a greater understanding of the issues of child safety online. Survey results were a great start, but getting out and seeing the faces of concerned parents made the issue more personal.
Design Process
I applied the following design process:
Who would use KidVid?
Here are some of my initial assumptions.
A child who:
• Loves learning and trying new things.
• Wants to learn about other cultures.
• Can’t wait to see the world.
• Is between 8 and 14 years old.
A parent who:
• Likes to be involved in their child’s activities.
• Is more technically savvy than most people.
• Wants to have more control over the content their child is viewing online.
Primary concerns:
“ Comments on their video posts (from other kids as well as predators posing at kids). And what my kids might be exposed to when watching content created by other kids”
Headaches and Obstacles:
“Having to screen EVERY video before they upload it, and knowing they will try and upload them without my knowledge”
With a persona designed I began the sketching process, I used 10x10s to explore concepts about how certain screens should look. I did this over and over taking into account the behaviors of my personas.
My original idea involved the orientation in a landscape similar to YouTube Kids. However, when I presented it to parents they disliked it. Trying to type information on a landscape keyboard was NOT the preferred method for adults. Building the information architecture in a landscape orientation was overly difficult compared to laying out a wireframe in portrait view. Ultimately I redesigned the wireframes to a portrait view by default with the option to turn the phone to landscape if the user wished to. This presented the most user-friendly option first.
Summary: Designing onboarding simplicity needs to be a priority.
Breaking rules:
My target demographic was kids between the ages of 10 & 14. Because of this, I could take advantage of how quickly youths pick up and learn new technologies. I wanted to break out of the traditional design norms and try some new things. If SnapChat can do it why can’t I?
I designed the main dashboard to include a single FAB that when pressed would take users to a secondary page. When this didn’t test well I redesigned the FAB so that when pressed it opened up with both vertical and horizontal icons. In this design, I didn’t take into account the need for any additional submenus. After trying out those design ideas, and seeing users struggle to complete tasks. I made the decision to use material designs guidelines. Using a design guideline takes away most of the guesswork, and provides great rules to follow. Unless there is a specific design problem you’re trying to solve. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel, stick with patterns that people are already familiar with. Don’t waste time designing answers to problems that didn’t exist.
Gamification:
During user testing, I started thinking about how I would keep users involved in KidVid long term? What will keep kids motivated and consistently coming back to the product? I thought about implementing achievements for watching a certain amount of videos within a learning category. Rewarding kids for improving their knowledge. Similar to the way DevHub does when users learn to code using its services. Also knowing that this app would be used around the world, I wanted the achievements to have a visual look that is universally recognized across the globe. I went with Olympic style medals of Gold, Silver, and Bronze. They are recognizable across cultures.
User Interface
Color:
When laying out screens in wireframes it’s easy to just focus on the content and placement of things. As I started moving from wireframes into higher resolution the issue of how my color scheme would work across cultures came up. I originally wanted to use very bright and bold shades in my product. After talking with my colleagues about color options I realized I hadn’t taken into account how things are perceived around the world.
However, after doing some more research I learned that not all colors are created equal across the world. For example, green in the United States is related to money and growth. In Spain, it is related to being racy, sexy, and cheap. I tested several color layouts and with each iteration, the color choices became universal in terms of how they would translate across cultures. The last thing I wanted was an app with colors that are in total conflict with the culture of the user.
Multiple Languages:
I needed to account for the various languages spoken throughout the world. In the West, we read right to left. In the Middle East, they read left to right. In Asia, they use symbols in writing. I used Google translate and worked on 3 wireframes simultaneously testing layouts that would accommodate text in English, Korean, and Arabic.
I created layouts that maintain the same visual look regardless of the text placed in them. Giving letters adequate padding within their placeholders. Designing pages that mirror easily when flipped for reading right to left. I wanted KidVid to have the same look and feel wherever you were in the world. It was important to have that consistency within the product.
Trust, Safety, and Security:
I wanted to begin earning parents trust starting with the onboarding process. To do this I gave a clear explanation of why I needed each piece of information and how it would be used within the product at every step.
I want to give parents as much control over things like what videos kids can watch. Or stop them from uploading anything if their parents want to screen it first. I felt that I needed to make a parental admin panel where they could look at everything. The easy design solution would be to make a web portal where I would have more space than on a mobile app. When I presented this idea to a small group of parents they weren’t keen on it. They wanted to keep everything in the mobile app. To solve this I designed into the settings a parents control panel that was behind a lock-wall to keep kids from having access to things their parents didn’t want them to have.
These were items like a daily timer and the option to allow a child to publish their video. If this setting was turned to off a child could upload a video, but it would not be published until a parent viewed it and approved it. Parents would also have to acknowledge that the video met the community guidelines.
Prototyping:
I designed the prototype to showcase some of the security settings by taking the user through a certain scenario.
Scenario 1:
A parent receives notification that child has recently uploaded a video and is awaiting approval.
What does this notification look like?
What information does it contain?
How does this journey look? Step 1 step 2 etc..
Takeaways
As a designer, it’s easy to assume I know what is best for the product. This was evident in my original color scheme, layout, and my attempts to use buttons for new purposes. However, after failed user tests and many discussions with more experienced colleagues, I began researching things like the meaning of colors and how to present text in different cultures. I learned that taking the idea of an all kids video sharing service and building it into a functional prototype was a much more complex project than I had originally assumed. It took endless hours of research and dozens of user tests and design changes.
If you're wondering “was it worth it?” My answer is absolutely!
With each iteration, I learned something new that I can apply to projects later in my career. I gained detailed knowledge of how to work across cultures and languages through trial and error. In the end, it’s important to know that I am not designing for a small group of users but for a worldwide base of users who are all trying to reach the same goal by using the product.
Thank you for reading! If you’d like to see more of my work check out my portfolio.
