Civinet Project

Civinet: ParentMine Design Brief – Catalysing the Village around the Child

Infomercial for a conceptual app prototype by Kristian Burgess.

Overview

Students spent a month working with Civinet, a not-for-profit organisation on their ParentMine project, looking at the role of technology in assisting parent(s) who are working with external public or voluntary sector services in health, education and social care to support a child with additional needs. Students designed and prototyped digital service concepts for improving communications and information management for parents around support services activity.

User stories based on primary interviews by Laura Pearson.

Background

Many families have multiple support services involved and can feel dis-empowered and confused, experiencing ‘assessment fatigue’ as multiple workers come and go and multiple assessments are undertaken sometimes with little discernible improvement from the family’s perspective.

Families may be experiencing multiple issues, family members may be leading busy or chaotic lives. Others may have developed a distrust of services after seeing little discernible benefit from ongoing intervention.

Effective communication is one key challenge making it difficult to assess the changing needs of individuals, engage strengths in the family system and identify, implement and monitor useful interventions.

Innovative user journey map with service touchpoints and design opportunities by Beth Peek.

Challenge

Civinet is a not for profit company which aims to bring innovation to the social sector by testing and implementing innovative approaches to achieving positive social impact.

The ParentMine project is looking at the role of technology in assisting parent(s) who are working with external public or voluntary sector services in health, education and social care to support a child with additional needs.

The aim is to explore challenges for parents and other family members having access to and managing information about their family, about assessments and interventions in order to develop and prototype tools that will empower parents to better manage support and make sustainable improvements in their children’s well being.

Understanding the value proposition to the end user by Enrico Anggara.

Ask

Design and prototype digital service concepts for improving communications and information management for parents around support services activity. The proposed outcome should focus on the needs of the family and has the potential to connect all members of the system in an ongoing ‘conversation’.

The proposed solution should aim to improve engagement, communications and coordination of interventions that improve the wellbeing of the ‘system around the child’ and build the capacity of families to meet their own needs.

Developing high fidelity wireframes for an app by Laura Pearson.

Process

Students worked directly with David Van der Velde, Civinet’s founder and director, who organised meetings with potential users of the service to gain valuable research insights and feedback for design development. Students collaborated on the initial research phase before developing their own proposed solutions.

Developing branding and a visual language for an app by Beth Peek.

Results

Students were asked to create presentations explaining their conceptual solution which will include key user needs and research insights, a proposed digitally enhanced service in the form of a working demonstration or prototype and an infomercial video to show how it worked across one or a number of use cases.

Selections of the final screens including the pre-login screen, homepage, calendar, contact book and other navigation screens by Beth Peek.

As part of the signup process a sign up code is sent through the post by Beth Peek.