How Research with Parents Defined a New App & Ongoing Feature Development

CUSTOMER RESEARCH

Getting to know parents’ needs & frustrations with data

To begin, we conducted interviews with new parents to understand the current experience tracking their baby’s activities using apps. We learned where their apps could be double-edged swords – at times giving them reassurance and anchoring them in data, and other times providing stress through cumbersome UI and the additional mental load of interpreting the data.

The interviews helped us define user types based on the different ways participants use and rely on their tracking apps. We mapped the various stages of baby’s development across a tracking journey, each stage with a set of targeted priorities. The user types and journey stages showed us the importance of a simple, flexible app that can adapt to families’ needs at any given point in their baby’s development.

Next, we conducted a strategy workshop with the Nara team to brainstorm and prioritize the core design principles and functionality in a product roadmap. We worked iteratively with Nara product and engineering team to design a simple tracking experience to reflect the key components of the strategy for release.

Ongoing User Research

Evaluating and evolving the app

The initial release of the app received excellent reviews and was praised for its simplicity. With the app in parents’ hands, we now needed to learn how they were using it and what ways we could grow the app to support them better.

Usability tests with these users would be a challenge. Baby tracking is not limited to a specific moment; it happens in late-night diaper changes, after-the-fact feed logging and other in-between moments of the day. We also didn’t want to take valuable time and energy away from parents caring for their infants. For this time-pressed user base, we created a rolling and flexible structure of user research. Their feedback was captured in light-lift ways – from surveys to user diary “snapshots” and video interviews.

At key milestones, we presented research findings and collaborated with the Nara team to design solutions that meet the discovered user needs. We identified areas of focus for the next round of research to explore or inform upcoming features on the roadmap.

OUTCOMES

Parent-inspired app design

Using the research with parents as a continued resource, Everyday iteratively designed a simple and clean user experience that enables personalized and collaborative baby tracking. The research has informed popular features such as enhanced trends, routines tracking, photo upload functionality, and tracking reminders. We continue to work with the Nara team on the app to help parents have peace of mind and actionable direction through their data.