Parent Camp: A UX case study

Parent Camp: A UX case study

Nearly 100 million Americans have an adoption in their immediate family *1

The average child waits for an adoptive family for more than 3 years *2

Hundreds of thousands of children await adoption each year, and hundreds of thousands prospective adoptive parents struggle with how to make the best decisions for their lives and the lives of their families.

The Challenge-

Our team wanted to address the issue of adoption and how each individual might approach:

• The decision to adopt a child and how to go about it.
• The decision to place a child for adoption and choosing the right family.

We approached this problem with the framework of Design Thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Empathize-

We started with our assumptions about the process of adoption.

• The process of adoption is expensive. Also, not knowing about the medical history of a child’s biological parents could also mean big costs/difficulties of hereditary medical/behavioral problems etc…
• The process is time consuming
• The process can be emotionally risky in the event that the adoption falls through or the biological mother wants to keep the child at the last minute.
• The only reason people adopt is because of infertility.

Initial Research Discoveries-

As we researched deeper into the subject we learned that the world of adoptions has changed drastically in the last few decades. It used to be that all adoptions were strictly ’closed’, meaning there was no contact at all between the birth mother and the adoptive parents and any such contact was seen very negatively. In recent years however, research has shown the benefits of having more open communication and contact between birth mothers, the children they had adopted, and the adoptive parents.

In our research, we interviewed several people whose adoptions were closed, and some people whose adoptions are very open. We learned that almost every adoption agency or adoption services provider currently encourages all participants to choose the open adoption format.

User Pain Points-

Our research and interviews made us realize that there is a lot of confusion about the adoption process. We found that adoptions can range anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000, and that huge range can also be discouraging.

Not knowing where to start coupled with the possibility that they could end up spending upwards of $50k intimidates and scares many people away from the decision. We wanted to find a way inform people considering adoption about the different routes they can take and how much they will cost.

Our survey gave us some interesting data:

• 71% of respondents said they thought their adoption cost was too high
• Most of the recent (within the last 10–15 years) were open format, while most adoptions from decades past were closed
• Cost was the biggest determining factor in whether respondents rated their adoption process highly, the next biggest factor was the overall headache of paperwork, bad info, and unreliable agencies

One of the most difficult and frustrating parts of the process is that there is no central hub for information, resources, or community, so the process varies wildly from case to case. One person with extensive experience with adoption that we interviewed said the following:

Define-

Based on our research, interviews, and survey results we realized that we could not fully address the issue without creating two separate personas:

1. The adoptive-parent-to-be, facing the wide range of challenges presented by the adoption process:

2. The expectant mother facing the many huge decisions that unplanned pregnancy brings:

Based on our research, survey, and interviews, we found that the most important issues we could address would be:

• The overall confusion and lack of a central information resource.
• The often very costly and varied cost structure in the different routes a person can take to adopt.
• The overall difficulty of the decisions related to adoption. Learning about other people’s experiences can help inform a user’s decision in a way that objective information cannot

Our product needed to be a place to connect people, give them practical advice and resources to help them through their current challenges, and educate people in any phase of life about the challenges and benefits of adoption.

Ideate-

We started with a user story map. Here we wanted to help our personas achieve their goals through tasks. We tried to put to paper any action or experience that would help our personas with their frustrations/pain points. We created tasks that directly tried to answer these questions that derived from our survey and interviews:

• How do we reduce the general confusion about the process?
• How do we help identify the factors that affect the cost?
• How do we help a person decide about adoption?
• Is there some kind of community help a person could seek when they are faced with the decision?
• How do we help connect persona a to persona b?

Note the actual Silicon Slopes in the background…

Some of our categories that were later consolidated: Best practices, Cost, Agency, & Private

User Flow Map-

Having a broad subject that requires a lot of info for the user means they could get lost easily. To avoid this problem, we wanted to have a solid narrative flow that helped our persona find the most important information easily. In our user flow map, we tried to build a narrative experience for our persona in a way that would still address our goals.

Card Sort

Next, we conducted several card sorting exercises to test our information architecture and user flow. This ended up being our most useful exercise for three main reasons:

1. Our testers seemed very confused by the sheer number of cards

2. The redundancy of some tasks

3. The lack of an easily understood information architecture

This was unacceptable as the main issue we had identified was the overall confusion about the subject. Our card sort helped us see:

How to eliminate redundant tasks:

We had several places designated to contact an attorney. We had an entire page dedicated to teaching how to create an adoption profile. There were separate pages to describe each possible adoption path.

How to re-group some of our tasks under different categories:

We decided to make more complete categories in order to keep related information more closely located. Our Private, Agency, Open/Closed, Domestic/International categories became one category: Adoption Paths.

How to best create a narrative flow for our persona:

This came from the many times we watched participants order the cards in the way they thought worked best.

Card Sorting Exercises

We found our card sort exercises to be time well spent because it really helped us think out the structure of the website and our information architecture.

We started with several specific categories for our card-sorters to select from and all of the specific tasks we wanted our user to be able to undertake while using our product.

Our top priority was to create a product that intuitively guided our users through the information and resources that would be most relevant to them, i.e. if they were an expectant mother or a hopeful adoptive family.

This process helped us think carefully about how we grouped tasks and information, eliminated redundancies, and re-shaped some of the category names to be more clear and understandable.

Prototype-

Wireframes

We played with several layouts and different ways to prioritize information and make our different categories more easily located.

We started sketching wireframes for mobile first:

We knew that since adoption has been such a source of happiness to so many families, our approach to the website had to showcase families and have a gentle, approachable feel. We wanted images of families to be the main focus of our homepage with a system of clearly directed navigation.

You can see we tried several different layout options ranging from simple layouts with one hero image and a hamburger menu to more crowded layouts that would have all our categories/user story routes visible to the user right away.

…

After working with our mobile wireframes, we moved to desktop wireframes. We knew we would have a lot of information to convey and we would need a header that would be able to give our user all the options they needed.

Desktop Wireframes

This was our first wireframe of our desktop homepage, this was done before our card sorts, so it has 7 drop downs in the header to match all our overly specific categories.

Wireframes after some card sorting

This was our second round of desktop wireframes, notice the simpler navigation. This was the result of card sorts.

This is our adoption event calendar. This was very important to us because we wanted to make pathways for people to meet in the real world and help fight the feeling of being alone in their decision.

Test-

This was our working prototype of our second wireframes. For our design reviews, we asked for feedback related to our information architecture and user flow:

Design reviews of our wireframes were great learning experiences. We worked hard to make a functional website that intuitively guided the user on a narrative path through the site. We learned that We tried to add too much Hi-Fi functionality too early (see the 3d flip hover state animation) and learned about the importance of not leaving information architecture to chance depending on the user hovering over a box. This was something we had to focus on in our Hi-Fi, we needed to have the copy visible without relying on the hover-states. We also got feedback that our site wasn’t as intuitive a guide as we had hoped. People didn’t feel like they knew where to go or if there was some kind of sequence they should follow. I focused on these issues as I moved into my individual Hi-Fidelity design.

Hi-Fi

I wanted my Hi-Fi version of our group’s design to fix the obvious problems noted in our second design review that would make very open, simple navigation that naturally lead the user through our site. I also wanted users to see happy families as the main image theme to encourage users with positivity. Finally, I wanted to have multiple ways to easily find the info either of our personas would be seeking. I went through many iterations that I learned a lot from. Here are a few:

I tried to mimic our shapes and layout from our wireframes, but realized the large rectangles ate up so much space, I wanted a lot more whitespace. Also, this color felt too harsh for an adoption website

This was a couple iterations later. I made the photos circular to open up some breathing room of whitespace. It also helped focus the eye on the people in the photos instead of the boxy structure of the page. I worked with this blue but was never too happy about it. Also has some alignment/typographical problems that I focused on in the next iterations.

I downsized my footer here, with smaller icons. This color felt much more appropriate for the subject matter. I tested a bunch on how far above the fold the bottom of the hero image would sit. I put the next elements within view but not fully above the fold to direct a user downward.

A path for pregnant/expectant mothers:

Researching adoption paths

Considering potential adoptive parents

A path for prospective adoptive parents:

Creating a profile to start the process

Conclusion-

What did I learn?-

This was a very interesting experience for me. I definitely learned a great deal about the adoption process and gained a newfound appreciation and admiration for the people who shared their experiences with us. I learned that having amazing teammates (Sammie Smith and Karlie Baxter) who work hard and communicate well makes the whole process much easier. I also learned a lot about the design process. I found that it was most useful for us:

• To be challenged
• To fail and/or be wrong often
• To keep thinking of different solutions to a problem instead of going along with the first and most obvious answer

Our Solutions-

Our project aimed to address the main roadblocks and difficulties in the adoption process. We wanted to build a guide that would:

• Help prospective adoptive parents control the costs of their adoption
• Dispel old assumptions and inform people about the process
• Connect people considering adoption and women considering giving their child up for adoption
• Connect women considering adoption to other women who have been through the same experience and help them to not feel alone

Our website focuses on the whole process of adoption How did we address the problem

Moving forward-

If I were to continue to work on this project, I would focus in two areas:

1. For the design and website itself: I would add more content to explain the process. I would also expand the community section to be a good hub for people involved in any way to connect and share their experiences and even get together in real life.
2. For the concept/brand overall I would start to build the community by soliciting testimonials to feature and encourage others to post. I would also partner with adoption agencies, adoption services providers, and lawyers who specialize in adoption to have resources and expertise all in one place. There are many routes this project could go!

Thanks for reading!

*1. Jahng, Kenny. “Adoption Awareness: 10 Facts about Adoption That Will Surprise You.” The Adoption Journey. June 17, 2012.

*2. Jahng, Kenny. “Adoption Awareness: 10 Facts about Adoption That Will Surprise You.” The Adoption Journey. June 17, 2012.

*3. Jahng, Kenny. “Adoption Awareness: 10 Facts about Adoption That Will Surprise You.” The Adoption Journey. June 17, 2012.