Prioritizing emotional support for children, fostering love and connection for those in separated families.
12 Weeks
Jan - Apr 2024
Research
Interaction design
UI design
Prototyping
Yuhan Ke
Eunji Kim
Robbie King
Figma
Miro
Adobe AE
Figma Prototype
Final report
Emotional trauma for divorce is highest for children the ages of 7-14 years old.
By combining emotional awareness with seamless digital interactions, we designed CoziFam — a supportive platform that strengthens the emotional connection between children and their divorced parents, where children feel loved regardless of physical distance.
Through AI-driven reminders & prompts, CoziFam encourages parents to record, share, and engage with meaningful moments in their child's life, providing vital emotional support to children who may feel disconnected due to separation while facilitating smoother communication for parents.
When Cozifam detects a heated exchange via text messages, it will trigger a brief interlude, reducing the intensity of emotions, allowing for a more constructive dialogue once both parties are ready to resume chatting.
Based on the child's daily activities, parents are encouraged to send a message or leave a comment to remind thecare and involvement, even if they aren't physically present.
Children can view all the comments on their tablets.
We aim to create a virtual one-family experience, making the child to feel connected and supported, even when physically apart from one parent.
Children can receive these thoughtful messages on their tablet, reinforcing a sense of love and connection.
This helps them feel emotionally supported by both parents, no matter where they are.
Cozi Moment is to share special moments right from their home screens for both parents and children. we want to build a channel where they can comment and build stronger emotional connections.
With the Cozi Moment Widget on their home screens, parents and kids can instantly share photos and videos with each other through a single tap. Family members can quickly add heartfelt comments, making nurturing emotional bonds throughout the day easy. No matter the distance, they are always connected.
During the research phase, I analyzed user insights to uncover pain points, tools, and opportunities in the current state map. I also created a future state map, narrowed the design scope, and identified our design entry points. I then rapidly iterated on the design through prototyping, progressing from sketches to user flows, wireframes, and high-fidelity designs.
After the group project concluded, I further refined the design on my own. I developed interactive prototypes to gather user feedback, conducted more testing sessions to validate design decisions, ensured alignment with user needs, and iterated on the design for continuous improvement and learning purposes.
We conducted secondary research by analyzing various studies, watching YouTube TikTok co-parenting videos, and exploring posts in co-parenting communities on Reddit.
To better understand the complex challenges parents face in co-parenting and parents' mental model about co-parenting, we conducted 3 deep listening interviews, each interview lasted 45 minutes.
Researching children from divorced families is challenging due to the emotional sensitivity involved, making it difficult to ask them to share their feelings without causing extra stress. Therefore, we analyzed numerous interview videos to gain deeper insights into their psychological experiences.
Through the analysis of interview videos, I identified 4 key mental spaces.
Through our personas, we found that within a family unit, individual schedules, activities and priorities can often be different. Yet fundamentally, the core needs of family cross paths and have a common thread. Maintaining a sense of normalcy while adjusting to a new transitional period remains a challenge for all parties involved.
I looked into existing competitors including expense record and co-parenting tools to understand key features and find inspirations.
We started our ideation by creating a future state map, focusing not just on current issues and constraints but on envisioning the ideal co-parenting scenario. This helped sharpen the direction, feasibility, and alignment of our ideas with the overall goals.
Ease the tension between parents, promote constructive communication and minimize the child's involvement in their conflict.
Even with a divided family, we aim to keep both parents actively involved in the child’s growth, preventing feelings of abandonment.
We hope to make sure the child's voice is heard and their needs are met with attention and care.
Based on our research insights and creation tools, we quickly sketched some early ideas. Each sketch contained 6 key elements: the name of the idea, the character, the context, the problem, the solution, and the value it brings to the user.
Then we built on each individual's ideas to explore more possibilities focused on a critical question: "What is the value to the user?", extracting key user value, and then organizing and analyzing all sketches.
In the end, we developed four primary use cases.
We started our ideation by creating a future state map, focusing not just on current issues and constraints but on envisioning the ideal co-parenting scenario. This helped sharpen the direction, feasibility, and alignment of our ideas with the overall goals.
I presented storyboards and wireframes to divorced parents for validation and feedback. However, gathering direct validation from children in divorced families is challenging, as it's difficult to ask them to express their feelings without causing additional stress. To address this, we explored alternative methods by collecting parents' observations and documentation of their children's behavior, using this to indirectly validate whether the concepts work for children.
Through comprehensive usability testing with multiple families, we identified and prioritized key features, enabling us to optimize the features based on real user behavior and engagement patterns.
Through parents' documentation, we found that since children don’t need to keep track of time, they are reluctant to wear smartwatches for long periods. Instead, they show interest in larger interactive devices.
If Cozifam detect heated exchange, it will trigger a brief interlude and provide a tone suggestion " try this instead" to reduce the intensity of emotion.
Today is March 29th. Jess took Lily to the museum and took a lot of photos of her.
CoziFam prompts Jess to upload some of the pictures.
After receiving the notification about the uploaded photos.
CoziFam prompts Todd to leave a message for Lily, expressing
his care for her.
Lily can receive messages or comments from her parents on her tablet.
She can also view everyone's comments on each part of the trip.
01. Ability to quickly adapt to different design challenges.
The theme of this project was completely new to me in my daily life. I needed to understand the challenge and deliver a high-quality design within 12 weeks. Through this project, I enhanced my ability to quickly adapt to different design challenges. I believe that with this experience, I can deliver quality designs for various future projects and themes, regardless of their unfamiliarity.
02. Find alternative solutions to design challenges with limited resources.
During the research phase, accessing and engaging with the target users was challenging due to their relative sensitivity and limited availability. To overcome this, I sought alternative methods to deepen my understanding of their needs and advance the design process. By leveraging online resources and other indirect research methods, I was able to gain a comprehensive view of the design challenges and user pain points. This approach provided a solid foundation for informed design decisions, even without extensive direct interviews with the target users.
03. Quick prototyping and iteration to identify valuable design directions.
In this fast-paced 12-week project, rapid prototyping and iteration were essential for exploring and refining design directions. I used low-fidelity methods like storyboards, wireframes, and prototypes to quickly visualize and refine design ideas. These quick visualizations helped me clarify my concepts, engage with users, team members, and professors, and gather feedback efficiently to pinpoint the most promising design directions.
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