Microsoft Family Safety App
Microsoft Family Safety App
Project overview
The Family Peace of Mind App aims to provide an experience to users that delivers peace of mind within the family ecosystem. This experience is centered around safety, trust, and balance between both parents and children.
As a UX Visual designer at Microsft, I have been working closely with researchers, project managers, designers, and engineers to create a new family experience for our customers, and help families achieve more while living happy productive lives.
Tool
Photoshop
Illustrator
Figma
Role
UX designer
UI designer
Method
Information Architecture
User Persona
Storyboarding
Competitor Research
Wireframe
Timeline
Apr 2019 - Present
Type
Group Project
The problems
Parents also feel powerless in the rapidly evolving technological world they live in, because they don’t have the tools to assure that their kids are safe in the physical and digital world when using technology.
87%
of parents’ primary needs are keeping their kids safe while ensuring they develop healthy digital habits.
64%
of parents worry about their kids' safety when using technology but feel that they are unable to guard their kids online
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Create a robust app to facilitate family dialog and help parents set guardrails for their children
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Use the app to help parents and children build healthy digital habits together
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Integrate the design solutions into Microsoft’s key device funnels like Windows and Xbox
The solutions
Design Process
Understand the users
The design time I work for collaborates with the user research team. From the data and research results the research team shared with us, we have learned that the Microsoft users who are using the existing Family Products are very diverse.
The variation of family architypes and family dynamic makes us rethink about family and brings a new perspective to the design principle:
Family is broader than parents and children. The definition of family should be expanded to represent a broader spectrum of family constructs.
Be Inclusive
Family and households are dynamic and the service model of the app should be flexible, customizable, and customer-centric.
Be Flexible
User interact with different types of devices in the tech ecosystem, so the app should be able to adjust itself based on the platforms.
Be Reponsive
User Persona
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Competitor Research
Design insights:
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Most consumer apps on the market are now family-aware, adding features or applications to support family needs
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Across the tech industry, family is being targeted with peace of mind, collaboration, and sharing value prop
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Family has a high ecosystem retention rate since multiple family members using the same products and services creates a barrier to any one of them switching ecosystems
Conceptualization
I started creating the information architecture and low-fi concepts for primary use cases, which is the nuclear families. And then the team shared the different versions of design with the product manager, developers, and stakeholders to get feedback. After having a go-ahead from them, I worked with the design team to create high-fi user interfaces.
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Visual Explorations
After confirming the fundamental information architecture, I had a design sprint on the user interface to bring the visual design to the next level. Regardless of branding and visual guideline, I designed a variety of UIs to help the team and myself to get inspirations.
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Visual Design
Based on the various explorations and the low-fi wireframes, we decided to combine the Microsoft Fluent Design Language and the gamification concept to design a delightful and efficient experience for our users. I collaborated with the design team to digitalize the idea.
Main pivots
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Family profile
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Driving safety
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Next steps
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Refine the visual design to accommodate Microsoft's brand identity and product ecosystem
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Design responsive UI to fulfill different user groups such as children, member, and admin
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Prioritize user needs and evolve the information architecture
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Replace competition elements in the gamification section with collaborative elements
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Conduct usability test to get feedback from users
