Parent Hub
Designing a platform that provides parenting tips and personalised insights into your child's learning
ROLE
Product and Visual Designer:
• Supported research synthesis and conducted interviews
• Led the user experience design right from ideation to the final prototype
• Collaborated on the launch strategy and post-launch insights
COLLABORATORS
UX Copywriter, Developer, Content Writer,
Marketing Managers, and Product Manager
IMPACT
75k users
CLIENT
PlayShifu
TIMELINE
4 months | March 2022 - July 2022
01 What?
PlayShifu, an EdTech company specializing in AR and STEM-based educational toys, identified a key challenge:
parents struggled to stay informed and engaged with their child's learning journey.
Despite providing interactive and curriculum-aligned experiences and interactive games, there was no dedicated platform to track progress, receive updates, or actively support their child's development. ​​
How can we provide a platform that strengthens the ecosystem by
connecting in-game learning with
real-world educational growth?
02 How?
To bridge this gap, the aim was to work on a comprehensive solution designed to alleviate the concerns of parents regarding their child's learning
and development.
With a focus on STEM games, the app empowers parents to monitor and actively engage in their child's educational journey.
The Double Diamond framework was adopted to guide us
through the design process for building this app.
Starting with the Discovery Stage, this phase included desk research, field research, and brainstorming.
03 Discovery
User Research
Lack Visibility into Learning
While parents know their children are playing STEM games, there’s no clear way to track what they’ve actually learned
Lack of Guidance for Engagement
Parents want to actively participate in their child’s learning journey, celebrate achievements, and play together, but they’re unsure how to get involved
Desk Research
The first step was to conduct desk research by analyzing E-learning companies and schools with existing parent apps. This helped us examine their purpose, core functionalities, and target user base.
The objective was to identify gaps and opportunities within the market, providing insights that would inform the design of our parent app.
By understanding how these platforms engage parents and track student progress, we could create a more effective and user-centric solution tailored to our needs.
To gain a deeper understanding of user needs, we conducted interviews with both parents and educators. This approach was crucial in uncovering their expectations, challenges, and preferences regarding parental engagement in children's learning.
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Based on the insights gathered, the following pain points emerged:
Unclear Skill Gaps
Parents have no way of identifying which skills their child has mastered and which areas need more improvement
No Regular Learning Updates
Unlike school report cards or PTAs, parents don’t receive consistent updates on their child’s progress
in STEM learning
04 Define
With the research done, we took a step back to sift through the findings, pulling out key insights.
From there, we defined the user and business goals that would guide the product’s next steps and set the direction for the design.
User Goals
1. Educational Engagement
2. Personalised Learning
3. Real-time Progress Tracking
4. Learning Resources
5. Ease of Use
6. Community Support
Business Goals
1. User Retention
2. Improving engagement
3. Brand Loyalty
4. Data-driven Insights
5. Cross-selling Opportunities
6. Scalability
05 Targeted Users
To bring the users to life, we created two personas that represented our target audience. Keeping these personas in mind made decision-making easier, ensuring every design choice stayed focused on solving their challenges.
06 Develop
During this stage, all the research and insights gathered came together to guide the design process. We used all the findings to shape the product's features and glow.
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Collaboration with the team—product managers, content writers, and developers—was key in refining ideas, iterating on concepts, and ensuring we stayed focused on creating a user-centered solution.
Brainstorming
In the ideation stage, I explored different ways of encouraging engagement for parents, as well as sharing achievements.
I also tried adding features like a to-do list, mood tracker, personality tests in the app but since these were nice-to-have features, we did not go ahead with them.
Wireframes
While working on wireframes, various ideas for parent-child interaction and sharing achievements were worked on.
However, for the Insights section, the core focus was on data-based metrics and how to provide bite-sized information to the parent at every intersection.
Sitemap
A visual representation of the app to provide a clear overview of its navigation and content organization-
Features like learning progress, achievements, playtime tracker, preferences, strengths, and weaknesses were focused on here.
07 Deliver
With the groundwork laid out, it was time to work on the final interface design, make fine refinements, and collaborate on the launch strategy.
The Solution
Parent Hub by PlayShifu is an app designed to provide a platform for parents to see insights and achievements from their children's games. It provides real-time updates, allowing parents to gauge their development and identify areas for improvement.
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Parents can join their children in their learning journey through the app, celebrate achievements, and provide guidance and support.
Splash
Onboarding
Landing | Home | Menu
Skills- Overview, Progress, Milestones
Banners
Design System
Colour Palette
Buttons and Cards
Home/Skill
Overview/Card
Milestones/Card
The overall design language of the app has to be in sync with the PlayShifu brand language. Keeping this in mind, the design system was built to provide a delightful and enriching experience both kids and parents can experience.
Typography
Iconography
Icons
Skills
Sub-skills
07 Impact
Parental Involvement
Personalized recommendations and report cards encouraged ongoing interaction, leading to a more enriched learning experience.
Increase in Product Adoption
After launch, a community feature was introduced, allowing parents to share achievements and engage with others, driving higher product adoption
Once the app had been delivered, it was important to gather
user feedback, and monitor some key metrics like user retention and look out for drop-offs.
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The app went through multiple iterations where existing features were edited and a new feature called Community was added.
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We also monitored cross-selling numbers to see which products were being sold through Parent Hub.
Increased Feature Usage
Growing feature engagement provided valuable data, helping the team refine and enhance the platform. User behavior insights guided updates, ensuring continuous improvement based on real needs.
Boost in Sales Through Personalization
Parents who received personalized insights and recommendations were more likely to purchase additional products, leading to increased cross-selling and higher overall sales
Learnings
The latest update of Parent Hub received positive feedback from our users. We saw a decline in the drop-off rate as well as an increase in user retention.
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Looking back, there are a few learnings I took away from working on this project:
1. On the technical side, I got to learn and explore native and mobile interaction patterns while collaborating with developers and product managers.
2. When building a new product, focus on building from the ground up rather than designing some nice-to-have features
3. Keeping scalability in mind while designing is going to benefit both the users and the business
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