being unique doesn’t always equate to being better
how taking designs familiar to the users and integrating them into a fresh concept greatly improved the calendar feature in AppClose - a coparenting app
Project Timeline: 3 months
Tools: Figma, FigJam
Roles: UX/UI Research and Design
BACKGROUND
In the US alone, more than 60 million children are impacted by custody decisions every year.
“Custody decision” sounds a lot like “custody BATTLE”. And as expected, many custody cases do in fact involve high conflict that leads to court.
But in reality, the majority of custody decisions are far from a battle and are settled through positive avenues that don’t involve a trial.
More than 70% of child custody cases are decided through stipulations or settlement agreements.
Around 58% of US custody cases require court intervention due to conflict between parties.
About 75% of high-conflict divorces lead to custody disputes.
Around 53% of child custody cases are resolved through the use of mediation.
(Source: GITNUX)
With the majority of parents not needing to go through court, it sounds like they don’t have any problems that need solving…
That is, until you learn about the role coparenting apps play in even the easiest of custody situations - and the heavy dilemmas they force coparents to face.
As court systems have steadily increased their use of coparenting apps as a way to help high-conflict parents communicate in a safer way, the benefits of these apps have become more widely recognized by all kinds of coparents and the professionals who help them. Coparenting apps aren’t only being ordered for cases that go through a court trial, but they’re being recommended by the mediators who are helping so many accomplish custody arrangements without the courts.
Coparenting apps are meant to help coparents stay organized.
Having children can give any parent a lot to keep up with, but that becomes even harder when the family isn’t under one roof anymore.
Features like shared calendars, messaging, video calling, and document sharing help parents living in separate households to still work together efficiently for the well-being of their children.
By having these features grouped together in a designated place, parents can easily separate their parenting responsibilities from their work and personal life.
They’re also meant to help coparents stay cordial.
Parents splitting up doesn’t happen because the couple is happy - some level of conflict will always be there.
Communicating with an ex-partner in a separate app vs typical texting allows parents to view possibly stressful messages when they choose to.
More importantly, coparenting apps are set up to help in the case of court needing to get involved.
A main feature of coparenting apps is the record-keeping of anything coming through the app - records that users do not have the ability to delete.
Evidence runs the show in a courtroom. And these apps ensure the truth can’t be avoided.
Since its creation in 2016, AppClose has quickly become a major competitor to the court-favorite coparenting app, OurFamilyWizard. And the reason why couldn’t be more simple.
AppClose is one of the few free coparenting apps.
Offering mostly the same basic and must-have features as every other coparenting app - with developmental bugs hardly ever occurring, users can’t say they got what they paid for. They’re getting much more.
But that doesn’t mean the features in AppClose are as user-friendly as in the higher costing options…
Out of 34,211 software reviews, 33.5% of users (that’s about 11,460 people) had a negative experience using the AppClose software.
Well, that isn’t exactly matching up to a 4.8-star rating…
calendar,
This meant a user problem was going unnoticed somewhere in that 0.2 of a missing star.
Turned out the truth was hiding in plain sight in those 31 reviews. Specifically, the 4 who rated AppClose as a 1-star.
The users had a problem with the app’s calendar.
Calendar,
calendar…
(Source: Justuseapp.com)
Parent schedules not merging correctly, event times not changing while editing, events not saving, whole calendar’s suddenly disappearing… With so many different kinds of complaints, it was clear AppClose’s calendar had a lot of capabilities.
But it also meant “calendar problem” wasn’t specific enough to craft a research goal. So AppClose was installed, a test account was created, and a quick look through the calendar capabilities was all it took to find a concrete problem to research.
Being different is usually a good thing for a company - but not when it’s pushing the user too far away from familiarity, and therefore easy understanding.
A calendar is one of the core features in every coparenting app. But it’s also something users are most likely using outside of coparenting apps every single day.
This means users coming onto AppClose for the first time are already familiar with how a mobile calendar should function.
This video demonstrates what it currently looks like to add an event to AppClose’s calendar -
showing why this majorly important feature is also one of AppClose’s least user-friendly.
This is what it looks like when adding an event to a Google calendar. (The same task on an Apple calendar looks very similar.)
Every detail of the event is right here on this one screen.
What exactly is it about other mobile calendars making them feel familiar to users that AppClose is lacking?
Compared to this highly familiar calendar experience, imagine the frustration the user must feel as they tap from screen to screen having entered in only one detail at a time.
Additionally, the video of AppClose’s event creation shows how the flow forces the user to input details in a certain order (not great when a user is trying not to forget a certain detail).
RESEARCH
Problem:
The calendar feature in AppClose requires more steps to perform the same functions in more widely-known calendars, possibly dissatisfying their current customers and limiting potential growth in their user base.
Research Goal:
I want to know what difficulties users have with AppClose’s calendar so that I understand what will make the calendar easier and more enjoyable to use.
Research Objectives:
Understand how users interact with the AppClose calendar.
Discover what obstacles users face during those interactions.
Understand what goals users want to accomplish by using the AppClose calendar.
Discover how users compare their experience using the AppClose calendar to one or both of the following:
their experience using the calendar in the coparenting app they currently use
their experience using other calendars they use frequently, such as Google or Apple
The main focus during this competitive analysis wasn’t the company itself, but rather their calendar feature.
However, it was still important to get an idea of the other features being offered and to find out how much it cost for a user to gain access to the calendar feature (some companies offer certain features for free with the rest are behind a paywall, while other companies are “all or none” with their features).
After learning more about the different services offered amongst the various apps, there were certain capabilities that seemed most important for a coparenting calendar to include to cover the needs of both general and high-conflict coparent. A chart was made to easily see whether the competition was offering these calendar-specific capabilities to their users or not.
Expected calendar-specific capabilities catering to general coparenting needs:
Having pre-set custody (parenting) schedules to save time, but also allowing for custom-built parenting schedules for unique cases
Allowing basic calendar features to be tried for free
Allowing users to sync their app calendar to their other calendars so they can see everything in one place effortlessly
Color-coding events in order to easily differentiate between different types of events
Having all calendar features accessible through desktop and mobile for easy access in any situation
Expected calendar-specific capabilities catering to high-conflict coparenting needs:
Showing the parenting schedule on the calendar
Highlighting special events, such as holidays, and being able to override the normal parenting schedule
Highlighting which event belongs to which child
Notifying the other parent when a change has been made to the schedule or other events, and allowing both parents to make changes
Not forcing both parents to pay for upgrades in order to use them
Only 1 of the competitors offered more than 3 of these 5 expected capabilities. But none of the competitors offered less than 2 of the 5.
None of the 4 competitors offered more than 3 of these 5 expected capabilities. 2 of the competitors only offered 1 of these 5!
With AppClose being a free app, it was already fulfilling the biggest opportunity available among its competitors. But the fact these companies were all being sporadic in offering many helpful calendar capabilities showed a very simple opportunity:
Find a way to incorporate all 10 of those capabilities instead of just a few.
Coparents have more than one need, and they’re hoping to find an app that covers them all in one place.
However, many are willing to do more work and/or use multiple services if it means they get ONLY the features they need and they don’t have to add another payment to their budget.
Having a shared calendar is almost always a crucial part of coparenting. If they didn’t use the coparenting app’s calendar, they used Google’s. However, they would use the calendar in their coparenting app instead if it was as user-friendly.
Having a calendar with inconveniences/bugs isn’t enough to make a user feel that it’s hard to use AND it isn’t enough to convince a user to stop using a certain co-parenting app all together.
The negatives of the AppClose calendar were directly correlated to it feeling inconvenient.
All 5 participants were familiar with, and currently use, Google calendars. Only 2 participants felt using a Google calendar was easier than using the AppClose calendar. The other 3 didn’t feel there was much difference between the calendars.
2 of the 4 participants who were using an iPhone found it very annoying to set the time with the scrolling wheel, despite setting time in the same way in a Google calendar.
User tests of the AppClose calendar were conducted with 5 single parents who were either currently or had previously used any coparenting app. The participants were asked to install AppClose onto their phone and then given login credentials to a test account. They each were given a scenario and asked to create an event, add a location to the event, and to edit the event. Participants were also asked interview questions before the user test about their own experiences with coparenting apps, and then again after the user tests about their experience with the 3 tasks they completed.
This produced 7 key findings.
Mike Adkins
the busy, but caring father
Background
Mike Adkins is a 38-year-old father of 2 kids. Almost a year ago, he and his wife decided to separate. Enjoying his new life being on his own, he’d like to communicate with his ex as little as possible. However, having kids with her means they have to talk about the kids’ extracurricular activities, medical appointments, and the expenses related to those things and new clothing as their kids grow older. Thankfully, Mike and his ex have been able to agree on most things surrounding their children, but conflicts are impossible for them to avoid entirely and scheduling hasn’t been nearly as easy as when they saw each other every day in the house. On top of that, they’ve had to learn how to split up costs for the kids, which includes having to reimburse each other at times.
At first, Mike was using multiple different services in order to handle all his co-parenting needs. But juggling them all on top of adjusting to the life of a single parent quickly became overwhelming, which is why he was so excited to find out about co-parenting apps. This would allow Mike to handle all of his co-parenting needs in one convenient app. However, the most popular app costs way too much now that he’s living on one paycheck and other apps are overwhelming with how many features they have.
So for the past few months, Mike and his ex have instead been using a free co-parenting app he found called AppClose. While it may be free, multiple of the features in AppClose, like their shared payments and calendar, don’t always work properly and aren’t as easy to use as the old services he had. And he doesn’t feel like he has the time to spend on trying out a bunch of other apps, so he’s thinking about just going back to using separate services. He doesn’t feel like he can win.
Motivations & Values
Mike’s ultimate goal is to let his kids just be kids and not get stuck in the middle of any adult duties or conflicts. And on top of that, he doesn’t get to see his kids every day anymore, so he wants to be able to spend as much time with them as he can and still give them the attention any child needs.
Because of this, Mike values the little things that save him the time of updating his ex on costs and appointments so that he can instead use that time being there for his kids.
Frustrations & Pain Points
It’s stressful having to frequently talk to someone he’s no longer in a relationship with, especially about things that have become more routine
It takes a lot of effort to remember everything he wasn’t able to tell his ex or organize in the right place earlier in the day
Living on one paycheck makes it very hard to decide between adding another bill for an app or the inconvenience of having his needs all over the place
Some of these apps have such a big learning curve that Mike feels it’s almost less stressful to just not use one at all. However, it’s also so time-consuming to continue co-parenting the way he has.
Needs
Communicating with his ex as little as possible
Reducing all the things he has to remember to tell his ex about at a later time or to organize in a certain place
Finding more cost-efficient services and products
Avoiding time-consuming efforts to either use multiple services for just one task or dealing with a big learning curve to use a co-parenting app
Finding an easier way to manage his children’s schedule separately from his own
Goals
In order to fulfill those needs, Mike wants to find a single app that will separate his children’s needs from his personal ones and that will contain all the features required to complete the following co-parenting tasks:
knowing which parent is picking up/dropping off which child, as well as when and where
digitally sharing new events and appointments
seeing all of his kids’ events at the same time, but also being able to easily differentiate which child each event is for
digitally requesting and reimbursing payments
storing and sharing documents
How might we create a calendar experience inside the coparenting app that’s similar to what the users are used to from Google calendars?
How might we create value in using a calendar alongside the other features in the coparenting app?
By creating an Event Details page that won’t change the information asked for, but will format it all to be on a single page.
There are only a few details in the AppClose calendar specific to coparenting that aren’t found a Google calendar. The main difference is how the 2 calendars are formatted.
By allowing the user to access requests for schedule changes and reimbursements at the end of creating a calendar event.
Certain features make sense to be used together in one sitting - like creating an event that will then lead to needing to request a custody schedule change. But the app currently forces the user to keep returning to the same page and open the same menu multiple times.
IDEATION & UI DESIGN
Since only a single feature was being worked on for an already existing company, the colors used for the wireframes were matched as closely to AppClose’s current version while in Dark Mode.
Creating the Event Details page was more or less mixing the format of what’s seen in a Google calendar with the element sizes, shapes, and colors currently being used in AppClose, while deciding the order of the input fields that would make the most sense for coparents. Due to this, sketches weren’t needed.
The only page being made from scratch was the Additional Info page, which included only 2 fields. So the focus was on playing with different shapes to find a good blend between elements already found in AppClose and what would be easiest for the user to understand.
Primary Color
#FF6617
Accent Color
#01C770
Background Colors
#1F1F1F
#2D2D2D
#888888
There was only 1 task flow now that multiple of AppClose’s features were being combined. However, that also made the task quite long. To make it easier for the participants to follow, and easier to get accurate answers while their memory was still fresh, the task was broken into 3 parts:
Entering in the event details
Requesting a schedule change
Requesting a reimbursement
Hi-fidelity testing was overall successful, but 1 screen needed 3 very simple changes.
2 Main Issues
For all participants, the 3 tasks felt completely
separate instead of feeling like the one flow of creating the event.
While 4 of 5 participants didn’t feel the 2 requests were mandatory, they still didn’t find it as obvious as they could to tap the “Create” button in order to finish the event creation.
To make it clearer that the “additional info” page is still part of the event creation, 1 change was made:
By changing the button from simply “Create” to “Create Event”, it should remind users that, while they’re on a page to add optional information, they are still ultimately in the flow of creating the event.
To make it clearer that the 2 requests are there for convenience, but not mandatory to create an event, 2 changes were made:
The title “Additional Info” was turned into a question - “Add additional info?”
The word “(Optional)” was added to the end of both requests.
FINAL RESULTS & NEXT STEPS
So, how is the AppClose calendar feature now :
creating a calendar experience inside the coparenting app that’s similar to what the users are used to from Google calendars?
creating value in using a calendar alongside the other features in the coparenting app?
Find out below!
Requesting a schedule change
AppClose already has this feature, but in this scenario, when the user has just finished entering in event details, they would now have to save the event, go back to the calendar, and go to the menu options a 2nd time to get to this request. By the time a user is finished creating an event, they could’ve been distracted and end up forgetting to send this request - causing conflict with their ex.
Now, users get a screen before they finish creating their event asking if they need to request a schedule change.
Entering in event details
When users create an event in the AppClose calendar, they’ll feel right at home when the features look and feel just like their other mobile calendars.
A single list they scroll through provides all the details for an event - including options specific to coparenting, like which child the event is for.
No more awkward side-scrolling through options like reminders.
Additional color-coding options to better organize events.
Requesting a reimbursement
Like the last 2 features, requesting a reimbursement already exists in AppClose - along with all the same formatting difficulties.
In a very realistic scenario in which the user has an upcoming event that they need to both ask for swap of weekends and buy their child something for that event that they’ll need to be reimbursed for, users would have to go through 16 different screens! And that’s without needing to attach any pictures of receipts or other files…
With these changes, users will spend their time on just 5 screens and never have to loop through menu options in the process.
Next Steps
These wireframes are ready to be sent off to the developers!
(And I would have entirely too much fun if AppClose would let me change all these frustrating features. Trust me when I say the calendar is only one of many. It would be a passion project!)
Reflection
What went well:
The competitive analysis was abnormally easy
A great thing about most coparenting apps is their transparency in pricing and having detailed explanations of their services, making research a breeze to do.
Firsthand knowledge!!
I’ve been using AppClose myself after my own high-conflict custody battle. (I told you it would be a passion product!) A big portion of the time spent on this project was simply confirming the same frustrations I felt with the app.
Challenges & lessons learned:
Firsthand knowledge can be tricky and lead to its own challenges.
It’s easy to get caught in your own opinions, thinking other users feel the same - but not knowing. Because of this, I was happy to do this project not only to get a glimpse of a fairytale “what could be” for a frustrating feature, but mostly to help me grow my ability to put my own thoughts in the back. Let the data and participants fill the void and guide the way.
If you made it this far, you’re awesome -
Let’s talk!
Thank you for taking the time to read through this case study!!
Hopefully you’ve seen the potential you’re looking for and would like me to help you create a useful and thoughtful product for your users. If so…