Table of Contents

• Preliminary research

• Low Fidelity Prototype

• Medium Fidelity Prototype

• High Fidelity Prototype

---

Preliminary research

Much of the preliminary research was completed in both A2: Domain Research and A3: Concept Proposal which are both available to markers on blackboard and A3 by hyperlink for convenience. The domain and problem space can be found on this wiki under the domain and problem space page however to summarise the findings of some of the research:

• 49.4% of divorces in Queensland involve children (Budget Direct, 2019)
• Levels of communication between divorced parents has been found to be indicative of the success of co-parenting and thus the mental stability of the offspring (Lawrence et al, 2011).
• Communication post divorce can be low and hostile especially because one of the leading causes of divorce is infidelity or extramarital affairs (Insider, 2020)

Additional research was conducted through interviewing members of both the target user group (divorced parents and children of divorce) and field experts which informed the creation of the prototype. Full interview results can be viewed here. The questions used were inspired by the Interview guideline provided by group member Michelle Kwok . Lastly, a child psychologist was interviewed providing some of the most educated advice on the subject. The key points to come from that interview were:

• The quality and type of communication affects kids the most
• The child can often become the messenger between parents
• Lots of negative communication is not better than no communication
• A lot of the effect of the communication depends on what communication was like preceding the divorce

Low Fidelity Prototype

Low Fidelity Prototype

Evaluation

Generally positive feedback about the concept of the application from the interviews with most saying they believe it would be useful in their particular situations

Medium Fidelity Prototype

Medium Fidelity Prototype Unfortunately my medium fidelity prototype was deleted so the given image above are the only screenshots I managed to get of it before it went however user evaluation was conducted on it.

Evaluation

A Think Aloud evaluation was conducted for the medium fidelity prototype. Users were given the prompt “please verbalize your thoughts, feelings, and opinions while interacting with this app”. The think aloud was open ended and as users worked through the app their comments were recorded. The full think aloud can be found here. Of the points presented by participants, the following suggestions were found to be shared by several participants:

• Have the homepage upcoming events link directly to the calendar
• Have a chat function to cover information otherwise unable to be communicated through the other features of the app
• Give the add event page a label incase it’s accidentally clicked so people know where they are
• Have exit buttons for ease of navigation
• Have recently found items so everyone knows that that item has been found and can stop looking

High Fidelity Prototype

High Fidelity Prototype

Here is an interactive final proof-of-concept prototype. No more user evaluations were conducted on the final version. To summarise the main social and mobile aspects of this prototype:

• Context-aware: built from interviewing the target user group and experts
• Has the ability to be synchronous or asynchronous: users can use the app at the same time or completely seperate times
• Interaction: allows users to interact with each other

This application is designed to be a crutch to help ex-couples communicate when there is a lack of trust. That is, it is to act like communicating without communicating for the benefit of shared children