Reinventing the parent letter for the 21st century

Public Services & NGOs

Services

Insights & Concepts

Prototyping & Testing

Applied Methods

→ Qualitative user interviews
→ Creative brainstorming
→ Rapid prototyping
→ User testing

Digital tools

Duration

2 months

client

challenge

Pro Juventute, a Swiss foundation supporting the rights and needs of children, wanted to modernise and redefine their iconic parent letter, which has successfully been providing essential information to Swiss parents and families for over 40 years.

Qualitative research

We conducted qualitative interviews with Swiss parents to discover their needs, pain points, and the behaviours involved in how they consume information and receive support at the start of parenthood. Approximately 70 interviews and experiments were conducted with new parents and parenting experts, allowing us to develop different personas, understand parent user journeys and identify stigmas and conflicts.

Analysis

Based on our collected data, we identified the primary pain points and areas of opportunity to develop a modern, digital version of Pro Juventute’s parent letter, creating personas and user journeys to highlight relevant points.

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Ideation

Using our extensive insights from the research, we designed and facilitated a co-creation workshop in which internal experts, parents, and designers worked together to generate a wide range of ideas, potential features and digital applications.

Prototyping

We prioritised and selected high-potential ideas for the digital parent letter, then created a first, rough prototype based on wireframes which incorporated the main components of the solution we envisioned.

User testing

We conducted two rounds of qualitative user testings with different clickable prototypes to validate our assumptions, get direct feedback from parents and iteratively refine the solution.

After evaluating, filtering, merging and testing ideas, our designers were able to come up with an initial version of the new digital parent letter. The prototype was designed as an app with personalised content based on the age of the child and included interactive features.

"One surprising outcome was the distinct differences between the German and French speaking part of Switzerland when it comes to parenthood and education. In the French speaking part, parents see themselves as more “laissez-faire” and driven by intuition, whereas parents in the German speaking part seem to rely more on objective information from trusted sources. We have never considered before that there might be different solutions required for different parts of the country."

Michael Augsburger, Business Associate at Spark Works

70

interviews with Swiss nationwide

2

iterations of user testing and prototype refinement

1

full digital prototype based on validated wireframes

outcome

A full set of wireframes of the digital prototype was tested over two iteration cycles with a small user group to receive qualitative feedback. We developed a quantitative evaluation of desirability using a smoke-test. This allowed us to gain an in-depth understanding of the needs of modern-day Swiss parents and insights into what the future of the new-parent letter should look like.

Project Lead

Michael Augsburger

Senior Innovation Consultant

Michael has a background in Environmental Sciences. His research focuses on the use of human-centred innovation processes for policy design. Believing in the benefits of interdisciplinary work, he has experience in coaching student teams to develop and push forward their own innovation projects. At Spark Works, he supports our team in the execution of agile work sessions with our clients through workshop facilitation.

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