Prompt

Design a third-party desktop web site or desktop app where the community can celebrate shared stories together through communal and authentic experiences.

Process

Our team treated this as a two day design sprint in order to help best facilitate our process and best organize our time through time blocking. We took inspiration from AJ&Smart’s 4 day sprint design process, condensing it into two days.

Problem space

Increasing youth screen time

After diverging to research how viewers consume and share media in general, one of the more interesting articles found was on how children are using technology increasingly for school and social interaction, leaving their parents concerned for how much time they spend in front of a screen.

opportunity

Mediate for new behaviours

Instead of attempting to find ways to reverse this increase of children being online, we referred to our prompt around media sharing, looking to find out how we could make this time spent online more meaningful. We found the following insights on the benefits of children viewing media, leveraging them within the ideation phase.

1. It's not how long the children are watching a show, but what they are watching and how they are watching it. Source.
   

2. Online playdates are more beneficial than none at all. Source.

3. It can be very beneficial to the children to discuss the movie at hand to help them empathize and sort through their own emotions and life experiences. Source.

persona

Designing for parents

Moving forward, we looked into researching the prominent goals and varying concerns Xillenial Parents have for their children along with other factors outside of their children. Meet Rachel, our 34 year old customer, who wants to educate her child at home about things that matter, making the screen time her child has more beneficial to their development.

GUIDING PRINCIPLES

Designing for children

As well, since we were new to designing for children, we wanted to ensure that we took a few main principles into consideration when moving forward. We gained insight from a variety of sources here, here, and here.

1. Make interactions feel more “social”
   

2. Provide context-based help and support

3. Allow for invention, self-expression, and storytelling

outcome

Our Solution

We created Watchtime. A website that helps xennial parents support their children’s (ages 6-8) socio-emotional development by allowing them to discover content via highlighting themes/lessons as well as setup up virtual “playdates” to allow children to share their content experience with friends and family, so that they can stay connected when they are apart.

The specifics

Login

Upon Opening the website, the watchers are greeted with a login page, giving them the ability to link their Netflix account with the Watchtime site.

Homepage

Entering the homepage, the watchers are greeted to a familiar video streaming homepage, with a few tweaks. Firstly, ability to explore by lesson taught theme. Secondly, the theme that each movie on the header shows specifically what category that film is under.

Setup Watchtime

Setting up a watchtime is standard, setting up a time and date, following up to the next page of sending the invite to friends and family, with the ability to copy the link to send to family, view your watch times, or attend the watchtime the watcher just setup.

Discuss themes onscreen

When watching the movie, a chatbox is prevalent ensuring those who might not have a mic setup can still converse the answers to the prompts brought up on screen. These prompts in relation to emotions seen by the characters on screen also have the scene of discussion played as to not have the watch rely on memory. Once the question has been talked about, the watcher can view the next one, or skip if they feel the need.

Finish

Upon finishing, the watchers can either see their other watchtimes, or end the current watchtimes to enter the homepage and set-up another watchtime if they see fit.

REFLECTION

The results

This was an incredible opportunity to complete a condensed (3 day) design sprint, full of learning, and keeping a process amongst the chaos. In terms of how we had done, our team had received a 94% by the judges.

Stick to the schedule

From the start, our schedule was very well thought through. Occasionally we would stray away, and sometimes for too long. Time blocking, and setting strict cutoff times proved to be incredibly helpful, and is something I take through to all my new projects.

Refer to the research

Working with my partners taught me how important research can be within the project. Ensuring that everything was based off of our research was paramount to guide our project in the right direction is a common element in design. However, when we had a disagreement on the direction, referring to the research was an incredibly helpful tactic to rationally work through the discussion.