Mommies
Empowering meaningful connections and enriching the lives of time-constrained work-at-home moms.
CONTEXT
Overview
In the "Mommies" app project, undertaken as a solo capstone for the Springboard UX Bootcamp, I tackled the prevalent challenges faced by Work-at-Home Moms (WAHMs).
Through extensive user research and analysis, I identified their struggles with isolation, limited social outlets, and stringent time constraints.
I adopted a user-centric approach to design, focusing on simplicity and efficiency to accommodate the unique lifestyle of WAHMs.
The app features a user-friendly interface optimized for brief interactions. It fosters local offline connections, thus significantly enriching its users' lives.
The project highlighted the importance of community support. It demonstrated the potential impact of well-designed digital solutions on enhancing social connectivity and emotional well-being among work-from-home mothers.
Duration
August 2023 - January 2024
Objective
Find challenges the Work-at-Home Moms (WAHMs) face, such as isolation, limited social outlets, and time constraints.
Outcome
Enhanced social connectivity and emotional well-being for WAHMs through a digital platform tailored to their unique needs and lifestyle constraints.
Design Solutions
Profile Viewing: Similar to dating apps, allowing moms to see and connect with others.
Chat Functionality: Enables moms to initiate and engage in conversations.
Social Gatherings: Facilitates joining playdates and creating events like coffee times and book clubs.
Marketplace Feature: Allows moms to exchange, buy, or sell children's books and toys.
CHALLENGES
The pandemic has introduced new standards that support career continuity for mothers.
As of June 2023, 70.4% of US mothers with children under five are employed, surpassing the pre-pandemic rate of 62.9%, mainly due to the flexibility of remote work.
This shift has helped women maintain their career trajectories post-motherhood, mitigating long-term impacts on income, job opportunities, and promotions. Despite the positive impact of remote work on working moms, the growing number of WAHMs post-pandemic presents unique challenges requiring immediate attention.
Work-at-home moms (WAHMs) with young children face many challenges, including isolation, limited social outlets, and unyielding time constraints.
Despite technological advances and the prevalence of social media, it is evident that moms struggle to connect with local moms for social activities, share experiences, and build a supportive community. The inception of Mommies emerged from a deep dive into the challenges faced by WAHMs and a commitment to providing a supportive platform.
SOLUTION
Connecting WAHM to empower meaningful connections and enriching motherhood
As an aspiring WAHM, I embarked on a mission to address the unique challenges Work-at-Home Moms (WAHMs) face. My project, "Mommies," is an innovative solution to foster connections, empower meaningful interactions, and enrich the lives of time-constrained work-at-home moms.
Fostering Connections
Check out profiles of local moms like other dating apps
Connect or dismiss profiles
Send friend requests
Chat with new connections
Empowering Meaningful Interactions
Join playdates with other local moms
Connect with moms nearby to exchange/buy/sell kid’s books and toys
Create events such as playdates, coffee time, book club, etc.
Enriching the Lives of Time-constrained WAHMs
User-friendly with simple interface
Optimized for rapid use for moms who can’t have enough screen time
Localized to facilitate effortless offline interactions with moms nearby
Design Process
Design Process
Empathize
RESEARCH OBJECTIVES
More Refined Target Research:
During my research, I discovered that the challenges faced by work-at-home moms (WAHMs) vary depending on the age of their children.
This variation is due to the changing needs of children as they grow, which affects the lifestyle and parenting goals of the mothers. Additionally, moms with school-aged children tend to have greater access to social networks through other parents and educational institutions.
To better understand the common challenges work-at-home moms (WAHMs) face, I concentrated my research on WAHMs with children under five. This group has seen the highest increase in the number of working moms since the pandemic.
Summary of Challenges for WAHM:
Navigating Work and Motherhood:
Balancing work and motherhood can be overwhelming.
Common challenges include long work hours, household chores, and emotional stress.
Work Demands:
Long Hours and Tight Schedules:
Difficult to balance work and family.
Leads to stress, guilt, and exhaustion.
Household and Childcare Responsibilities:
Chores and Childcare:
Managing meals, laundry, and childcare is time-consuming.
Little time left for personal relaxation.
Emotional and Mental Strain:
Emotional Toll:
Juggling roles leads to emotional fatigue.
Pressure to excel causes inadequacy, anxiety, and burnout.
Not enough social interaction and support
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
INSIGHT #1
The growing number of WAHMs post-pandemic presents unique challenges requiring immediate attention.
'The remote working’ is one of the positive outcomes of the post-pandemic world. The pandemic has introduced new standards that support career continuity for mothers.
More jobs allow remote working, and more moms are willing to switch to work remotely even if they have to face pay cuts and reduced opportunities to advance their careers.
Now more US mothers with children under five are employed, mainly due to the flexibility of remote work.
The Survey polled working moms in all 50 states, and of those surveyed, 79% of moms prefer remote work.
They prefer to work from home because of so many benefits like flexibility in managing time, saving commuting time and cost, and they can be with their families more.
INSIGHT #3
Finding the time to engage in meaningful online interactions can be a significant challenge.
Moms might find short bursts of time, typically 5 to 20 minutes, to browse online and social media during brief downtime.
These moments are often interspersed throughout the day, making it challenging to dedicate extended periods to uninterrupted social media use.
INSIGHT #2
The distinct challenges WAHMs face can significantly impact their emotional well-being, mainly due to restricted social engagement, highlighting the need for vital support and empowerment.
Limited local networking opportunities hinder the expansion of social circles for work-at-home moms.
Working from home can lead to feelings of isolation as daily interactions are reduced, making it difficult to establish connections with other moms.
Time constraints from working at home and caring for young children leave little room for social activities.
Some work-at-home moms may need access to local playgroups, support networks, or community resources.
USER INTERVIEWS
To understand the unique challenges work-at-home moms (WAHMs) face, I conducted in-depth interviews, targeting members from Slack, Facebook groups, and local mom groups.
Participants:
Five interviewees, all working full- or part-time remotely from home.
30 min Interview Structure:
Standard 25 questions for all participants.
Some tailored questions based on previous responses.
Topics Covered:
Demographics and lifestyle.
Preferences and pros and cons of being a WAHM.
Time management and balancing work and family responsibilities.
After collecting the interview information, I analyzed it more deeply using affinity and empathy maps.
Define
AFFINITY MAP
1. The synthesis journey unfolded through the affinity and empathy maps after gathering the interview data.
2. With each round of sorting and grouping, the once scattered pieces of information began to align, creating a symphony of patterns.
3. Notable highlights from established patterns:
WAHMs don’t have time to navigate apps with loaded features.
Some social apps don’t provide to fulfill their need for meaningful connections.
They want to connect with other moms and engage in activities, but finding a platform or community is too much work.
Does:
Checks phone for short bursts between tasks.
Engages in brief social media interactions when time permits.
Looks for local events or playdates but often feels overwhelmed by the effort required.
Feels:
Isolated and lonely due to lack of social interactions.
Frustrated with the complexity of current social apps.
Eager yet overwhelmed when thinking about organizing or joining social activities.
EMPATHY MAP
In order to gain a deep understanding of the users’ thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, I went through an empathy map exercise by breaking down users' experiences into what they think, feel, say, and do. Going through this process helped to identify pain points and unmet needs of the users.
Says:
"I need a simple way to meet other moms like me."
"I don’t have time to figure out complicated apps."
"It would be great to have a local support network."
Thinks:
"Am I the only one feeling this isolated?"
"There must be other moms nearby who want to connect."
"Why can't there be an app tailored for moms like me?"
PERSONAS
User Insights
Connection Desire: Eager to connect with other moms but finds it hard to dedicate time to finding and joining the right community.
Platform Preference: Prefers platforms that allow quick browsing and easy connections without needing long periods of uninterrupted screen time.
Engagement: Looks for meaningful engagements that go beyond superficial social media interactions.
HOW MIGHT WE QUESTION
How might we help busy work-at-home moms connect locally and support each other, fostering empowerment, understanding, and solidarity in navigating their unique challenges?
Ideate
During user interviews, many users identified isolation as a significant pain point.
This insight made me focus on enhancing social interaction among mom users.
Possible solutions?
A localized group chat that moms can join and plan offline meetings
Promote offline meetings and playdates
Users can create their events
A virtual coffee shop
Blind playdates
Dating app for moms? A platform where a mom can meet new mom friends.
A marketplace where moms can exchange to promote another way to meet!
Event location finder using a smartwatch
Get a notification when another mom user is nearby to initiate a chat
3. Wireframing
The initial hand sketches evolved into wireframes, transforming conceptual ideas into visual placeholders to lay the foundation for the high-fidelity prototype.
This sketch illustrates my concepts for prompting social interactions among users through the Mommies app.
2. Sketching
After freely exploring diverse ideas based on user needs, I transitioned into the convergence phase, refining them into a select few and sketching them.
Selected features are:
Dating app for moms- meet new mom friends
Join events posted by other moms
Create your own meet-ups
Exchange/buy/sell books and toys
4. Usability Testing
Through the guerilla usability testing, I pinpointed some problems in the user flow and the functional features and adjusted the wireframes accordingly.
Prototype
Mood & Style
Establishing mood and style to implement in the design process was very helpful and highly effective in achieving subtle and coherent designs.
Fonts—Since this app is designed for moms, I aimed to evoke a sense of softness and approachability by selecting a font known for its warm and friendly characteristics.
Color Scheme - The soft pastel peach and grey hues exude a feminine and welcoming ambiance.
SOLUTIONS
1. Enriching the Lives of Time-constrained WAHMs.
The app's usability and designs were crafted around these key concepts:
A user-friendly interface with straightforward navigation -
when you open the app, a mom's profile in your area comes out which you can select to chat just like a dating app.
Fast and efficient operation for moms with limited screen time -
Navigation is very simple and intuitive that the users don’t need to click so many times to find and chat with new mom friends or find a playdate to meet other moms.
Join playdates with other local moms
Connect with moms nearby to exchange/buy/sell kid’s books and toys
A focus on local features to enable offline connections -
Each event detail has embedded Google map locations.
2. Fostering connections through meeting new mom friends.
Go through profiles of moms to find new mom friends
Send friend requests
Chat with new connections
3. Empowering Meaningful Interactions through playdates and exchanging used baby items.
Create events such as playdates, coffee time, book club, etc.
Test
ITERATIONS
Lesson Learned: Less is More!
Initially, I arranged several profiles on a single screen, allowing users to scroll down to view additional profiles to make the app fast and user-friendly. Usability testing revealed that the layout was overly cluttered and slowed users' ability to choose a profile, leading me to decrease the display to two profiles. Subsequent usability testing showed that presenting a single profile per screen allowed users more time to absorb the information and complete tasks more efficiently.
I discovered that my attempt to simplify the user journey by compressing information into a smaller space and reducing the number of required actions actually backfired. Instead of making the app more user-friendly, it resulted in a cluttered interface and made the information harder to access.
Reflection
At the beginning of the project, I fell into the common pitfall of trying to simplify the user experience by compressing information, mistakenly believing this would streamline and expedite the app's use. This approach, however, had the unintended consequence of complicating navigation and usage. This experience taught me that a more condensed user flow does not inherently equate to a more intuitive user experience.
CONCLUSION
Reflecting on this project, I gained valuable insights into the daily challenges of work-at-home moms, who often feel under-supported by their family and friends. Should I have the opportunity to revisit the project, my priority will be to deepen my empathy for the users. I aim to introduce features that highlight their challenges more and foster a community that supports and empowers mothers to balance careers and family.