Elias Blanch - TheRiddler401/DECO3500-Mental-Wealth GitHub Wiki
Table of Contents
Links:
Research round 1
The initial round of research was conducted was interviews to gain a scope of how the domain applied in real life, such as how it affected the dependants mental health and has that process was like at different ages. The interviews provided valuable information that affected my concept. In addition, prior to the initial round of research, I had done research on young peoples mental health and found that during teenage years is the most volatile area in their life for developing mental health issues.
For the interviews a research guide with questions and topics to answer was created, this was beneficial as the domain of split families dependants mental health is vast.
Findings:
It was found that keeping the dependants in the communication loop about what is happening in regards to divorce, planning, and family discussion is crucial to the dependant's mental wellbeing. An issue that occurred for interviewees was that some ended up playing the middle-person between their parents and had to pass on information from one to the other, resulting in stress on them.
Key findings:
- Communication between dependants and parents is often affected as parent's don't wish to stress the dependant but do so anyway by leaving them out of the conversation
- Around the time of separation emotions are a mess for both parents and dependants, there is no way to stop that it seems
- Separations impacted the mental health of all dependants interviewed.
- Telling the dependant what was going on would have helped the dependants mental wellbeing
- Dependants commented that planning became hard after separation.
Another group member talked to a child psychologist about how a mobile or social system may affect the dependants well being and the key take away was not allowing negative communication to happen, hence this is something to take into consideration.
Concept:
From findings, a way to have communication with all family members through a joint platform of planning.
Hence, the focus of my project is to help the mental health human dependants of split families by stopping them from being the middle-person of communication between parents. Thus, we must first assume that these split families are not abusive, dependants still live at home, all parents have homes, electricity and internet. The system would be both a mobile and social technology, as it will allow communication, collaboration, interaction, presence, both synchronous or asynchronous use, as well as context-diverse, context-independent, location-related, and public or private use of technology.
Prototype 1 - Low Fidelity:
The first prototype was created using Adobe XD in a basic interactive wireframe design of a family planning application that would be displayed on a whiteboard in the house of each parent for everyone to view. Key points of the prototype:
- Allows shared planning via the calendar
- Allows parents communication on child matters
- Reduces stress on dependant by cluing them into what is going on for planning
- Stops dependants from having to pass on messages to the other parent as event plans are displayed on the calendar.
The prototype is an interactive wireframe
Low Prototype Link - Adobe XD
Research round 2
Evaluation and Feedback:
Addtional Research - other options of family planning that are available
Key takeaways:
- Personalisation options
- No direct messaging options, else if there ensure that no message is able to be removed to keep a record of what has been said
- Allow dependants to be in the loop of planning
- Don't involve finance else more stress on the dependants
- Focus on the needs of co-parenting
Design insights and changes:
Messaging Options:
Messaging allows any tension between split parents to continue, which can impact their mental health negatively and thus their parenting is affected. Things to consider when having a messaging option is allowing any negative communication to occur, positive and neutral communication should be allowed - as suggested by the child psychologist that was interviewed in round 1 of research- hence the application should filter negative content via picking up any harsh messages. Messaging should not be allowed to be deleted, as if these where to be taken to a legal matter they should depict what exactly happened and not what has been edited to convey a certain meaning. Overall, messaging should not be a function my prototype has, but notes need to be allowed to be passed between parents only as dependants do not need to be aware of everything, therefore I propose a forum style messaging system that follows all set guides above.
Personalisation:
From feedback and additional research, it was seen that stakeholders liked to be able to personalise the application they are using. This also comes as an accessibility benefit as those with reading difficulties would be able to adjust the applications look to their preferences, such as different background colour or bigger text size.
Having Dependants Involved With The Planning:
- Improves mental health by being informed by what is happening
- Allows dependant to have a say
- A fun way to improve the defendant's ability to plan
Needs of co-parenting:
- Keeping dependant connected with the other parent(s)
- Keep former partner(s) in the loop of what is happening, be open and transparent as you can be
- Plan ahead
- Be flexible
Hence, the application should support these needs by:
- Flexible planning, allowing the calendar to be changed easily
- Making the application child-friendly, possibly even fun for them to interact with the idea of having an asynchronous, different location system in which the parent in the other household can connect with the dependant
- A way for parents to communicate between each other in a safe way
Prototype 2 - Medium Fidelity:
For this prototype, I chose to create a website using Wix as it was an interactive application that could be placed on an actual interactive whiteboard, as per the main feature of the concept.
To see the development process please see the miro board for how it developed.
Final Product
Due to limited time, another round of testing wasn't feasible beyond the second prototype.
Evaluation and Feedback:
Key take away:
- Have a space to record dependants information such as allergies
- This system would work well for non-parenting situations
- Overall, positive feedback, users enjoyed using the system
- Having a more customisable home screen that allows one to change where things are placed and adding or taking things away from the screen would be beneficial to its use as a whiteboard
- Found minor issues with the layout of the application such as things not staying as they were when the user changes pages
Additional Evaluation:
Story Board and Personas:
Storyboarding allows developers to consider situations in which the application would work in certain scenarios. I had time to make up the personas that the system is based around, that being the Jones' family with a focus on Ezra's household. From the storyboarding, I got a deeper understanding of the need for the mobile phone friendly version and thus plan to focus more time designing it.
Design/ Concept Changes:
- Have a kids space page that had the dependants information such as allergies, favourite items, and favourite food. This space also has a space for people make comments in the kid info page, these are filtered and checking for any negative comments, but this is so anyone can make a quick comment on information, updates on the kid from the kid, etc.
- Changed the calendar system I was using to an internal one that, for the purpose of this prototype, does not require external calendar input.
- Adjusted the menu bar so that users have access to their profile page and put settings on the far right as per normal design layouts.
- Created a mobile-friendly version of the prototype- however, this is not the focus of the prototype.
- Parents notes is not accessible from any page in the prototype, as it was a poor choice to only have it available from the home screen
The Product:
Access final prototype here: Final Product
NOTE: To access parents notes please use the password 'parents'
Home Screen:
