
Onboarding
The user is able to customize their experience by answering questions about their preferences, such as the types of activites they enjoy doing with their kids and the supplies that are available at home.
Explore
On the explore page, the user is able to see trending activities that other users have uploaded and also activities that are recommended to them.
Share Ideas
This section allows users to share their own activities they have created for their children with other parents, which forms a community.
Search
“Search” is used to browse through various activities offered by Polliwog and to search / filter through activities.
00. Problem Space
Due to COVID-19, work-from-home (WFH) parents are struggling with balancing work and parenting. According to a national survey, 1 in 4 (25%) parents reported their own worsening mental health. Increased parental stress often leads to child-parent conflict.
01a. User Research: User Interview
We were able to interview 5 dads and 9 moms who work from home due to the pandemic.

01b. User Research: Expert Interview
We also talked with 3 experts, specifically a teaching assistant at Carnegie Mellon University Children’s School, a therapist at Carnegie Mellon’s CaPS, and a pediatrician in New York.

02. Target User
Based on our primary research, we are targeting WFH parents with young children between the ages of 2 and 6.
We set this age limit because children under the age of 2 have demanding physiological needs and are very dependent on their parents. After the age of 6, many parents described their kids to go into the phase of thinking that hanging out with their parents is “not cool,” causing them to be distant from their kids.
03. Initial Solution
How might we help WFH parents achieve a balance between parenting and working?
04. Ideation
Idea #1: Schedule + Reminder System
✧ Challenge: Parents find it difficult to switch between parenting and working.
✧ Solution: A digital scheduling & reminder app with customizable avatars by parents and children. Parents get reminders of upcoming schedule from their children’s avatars.
Idea #2: Collaborative Art Platform
✧ Challenge: Parents feel guilty about leaving their children to digital screens.
✧ Solution: A platform in which children can make art while parents are working. When parents get off work, they can review and work on the artwork with their kids.

05. Revised Solution
How might we reduce the time children spend looking at screens and help parents further their bond with their children?
After consulting with WFH parents, we decided to elaborate more on idea 2 and focus on engaging children with meaningful activities while the parents are working. By doing this, the application will be able to reduce parent’s feelings of guilt as well as help parents switch between parenting and working mentalities.
05. Initial Sketches
We started with figuring out the information architecture and decided to have a home page, a page to search for activities, a community page, and a favorites page.

With the information architecture in mind, we each took one section to sketch out. I was in charge of the “Find Activities” section.
Below are some of our preliminary sketches:
Below are some of our preliminary sketches:


06. User Testing
We also conducted 2 rounds of user testings with 7 users. We put the user in a scenario and designed a series of tasks for them to complete. While navigating through the app, we asked the users to think aloud so that we can collect feedback.
Share Ideas
The biggest overhaul we did is to change the community page from a place of sharing photos to a place of sharing original activity ideas. We want to build a community for the parents through this feature, but users were concerned about their privacy when sharing personal photos. The overhaul highlighted the idea of sharing within the parent’s community and avoided invading their privacy.



Filter
We redesigned the filter UI so that it is easier to use. We also set the user’s preferences for “duration” and “how many children” as default (from the onboarding questions) to save user’s time.



Material Preferences
We also addressed usability issues with small adjustments, such as combining the “materials at home” page with “materials you want to omit” page.



07. UI / Branding
To attract and satisfy both parents and children, the UI has to be simplistic with clarity for quick navigation and to convey a delightful mood.
For our main brand/UI color, we decided on green because polliwog is another term for tadpole. We wanted to express playfulness and boldness through the illustrations and colors.

08. Final Prototype
After completing all the user testing and finalizing the UI kit, we put everything together to create our final prototype of Polliwog!