Taipei City
Public Daycare Application Portal
Crafted a "thoughtful" system that reduces the cognitive workload for parents.
July - August 2021
Client
Taipei City Government
Project Type
UX Design & Research
My Role
Led the initial user research to inform the design
Based on research insights, designed the information architecture of the system
Created prototypes for rapid iterative testing and evaluation
Overview
I participated in this project during my experience at the office of the Digital Minister of Taiwan. Taipei City was facing an increasing number of users who could not successfully finish the public daycare application process. The scope of this project included conducting user research to help the Department of Social Welfare locate the problems in the application process and provide a redesigned version of the digital system.
I led the initial research progress. Through journey mapping and usability testing(n=5), I was able to help the team locate the problem in the system and gain comprehensive insights to help us move to the design stage. I also took the lead in transforming research insights into new information architecture, conducted concept evaluation(n=5), and ran RITE testing to validate the solution(n=5).
We delivered a redesigned system that is compliant with the WCAG 2.0 standard, improved the System Usability Scale score from 58(25 percentile) to 85(96 percentile). In November 2023, the Department of Social Welfare started the development of the system.
01 Context
Taipei City faced a lack of public daycare resources
In 2020, there were more than 20,000 newborns, while the capacity of the daycare system is 1,600 babies. There is a complicated process in deciding the priority of admission to daycare centers.
According to the Taipei City government, one-third of the applicants were not able to finish the process without calling for help or going to one of the daycare centers to ask for the staff’s help.
As a result, the application process caused extra cognitive load for new parents and the workload of the staff at the Dept. of Social Welfare was severely increased.
02 Assumption
We conducted a heuristic evaluation and found some obvious problems in the system as the first step.
The scope of the project was focused on the user interface of the application system itself. However, I believed that we need to examine the whole daycare application process from end to end to locate the problem related to the specific application context.
We drew an extended stakeholder map and talked with more departments within the Dept. of Social Welfare.
We also conducted stakeholder interviews with the customer support staff, who would be on the other end of the phone when a user called in for help.
As a result, we gain more understanding of how the daycare system works and where part of the system we can touch to realistically tackle the problem.
03 Initial Research
To understand the end-to-end process and specific problems encountered by the users,
I used semi-structured interviews and usability testing in the first stage of the research.
Our goal of the semi-structured interview was to map and understand the experience of parents going through the public daycare process from beginning to end. With the data we collected, we were able to create a Customer Journey Map containing specific steps parents went through and locate pain points in the journey as well as usability issues in the system.
04 Discoveries
As expected, we learned that the problem went beyond the application system itself.
The regulation for daycare applications was too complicated, users had to first spend a lot of time learning and preparing for the application.
We used affinity maps to organize data from research, and learned the following insights:
The attention span and energy of participants were limited. They are constantly under high pressure
The regulations regarding daycare applications are difficult to find and comprehend, which causes participants to fill out applications incorrectly all the time
When applying for daycare, participants have to use different systems to learn about regulations, choose daycare centers, and fill out applications at the same time
From what we learned from the research and our conversations with other stakeholders, we focused on these three How Might We to guide our design in the next step:
How might we simplify the information collection process, minimize the cost of searching for and comprehending daycare registration regulations, and reduce misunderstanding?
How might we help users of different demographics compare and choose daycare centers that best match their needs?
How might we increase the efficiency of the registration process and the accuracy of the submitted applications to speed up the process?
In addition, we decided to use a mobile-first design method.
One of the research findings showed that most participants found mobile phones to be a more accessible device when applying for daycare while taking care of their newborns.
05 Ideation
From HMWs, we conducted several brainstorming sessions, some with other stakeholders, and generated hundreds of ideas.
We evaluated those ideas to see which of the three HMWs they addressed and categorized them by effectiveness and feasibility.
Feasibility was a key concern. Through talking with the stakeholders, we understood that we have a budget and time constraint. Therefore, we want a solution that can make an immediate impact but also has the potential to scale and shape a better user experience in the future.
Using effectiveness, feasibility and three HMWs to guide our downselection
One theme that stood out for us was “linear user journey”.
One of the behaviors we observed in the research was that all participants had to jump between different pages and systems to complete the application process, which can be mentally draining, especially for new parents.
The linear journey was broken down into several independent modules so that the Department of Social Welfare could implement them at different stages.
06 Concept Evaluation
The low-fidelity prototype was used for concept evaluation(n=5).
I broke down user’s actions on the system into three parts and designed them accordingly:
Gather Information
Apply for Daycare
Track Result
Some of the specific design decisions I made included:
Provide necessary information contextually, so users don’t have to browse around for them
Limit the information and decisions on each page and make the CTA elements prominent for users to easily navigate around the system
Present daycare regulation in a more organized and comprehensible way
07 Lo-Fi Prototyping
A low-fidelity prototype was created for concept evaluation(n=5). The nature of the evaluation was exploratory.
We used the evaluation to explore users' reactions to the linear user journey concept. We also include the modified daycare regulations in the prototype to evaluate their comprehensibility.
Linear user journey was a success.
Participants were able to find the necessary steps and information much easier than in the original version. They can also easily comprehend the daycare regulations with the new regulations and FAQ page.
We want to be able to deliver the best possible design within the time constraint, so I proposed the Rapid Iterative Test and Evaluation method to the team.
We recruited 5 participants to conduct usability testing and modify the design and prototypes in between each session.
In this stage, my main responsibilities included:
Planning and running the RITE testing
Iterating design and prototypes related the information architecture
Conducting a virtual evaluation session on Google Meet
09 Final Design
With iterations from the RITE Testing, we introduced our final design.
Provide necessary information contextually so users don’t have to browse around and look for them
Limit the information and decisions on each page and make the CTA elements prominent for users to easily navigate around the system
Present daycare regulation in a more organized and comprehensible way
10 Final Evaluation
The redesigned system received a System Usability Scale score of
85 (at 96 percentile)
a huge improvement from the original 58(at 25 percentile). The system was also compliant with WCAG 2.0 standard.
Participants in the final usability testing demonstrated a positive attitude toward the system:
“The new website is more focused, there was too much irrelevant information on the old website. It always took forever to find information.”
-P1
“The system will guide you from one step to another…It even tells me what document I need beforehand, very intuitive.”
-P3
“Even If I don’t know anything about public daycare, I feel that I can easily learn everything I need from this website.”
-P5
11 Impact
The design was presented to Audrey Tang, the Digital Minister of Taiwan, and officials from the Taipei City government.
Presenting the responsive design on various devices
At the end, we delivered the design concept, user interface of the system, and research report of the system to the Taipei City government. We also provided a road map for implementing the system from the minimum viable product to the whole system.
As the daycare application date was approaching at the end of the project, we also designed a PDF document containing diagrams of the daycare application progress and daycare regulations in more digestible formats to immediately address the problem.
12 My Learning
In this project, the initial scope was only the user interface of the daycare application system
However, we would not be able to uncover a lot of the important insight if we focus only on the application system itself
A lot of the user behavior and struggle happened outside the system
The time of the project coincided with the peak of COVID-19 in Taiwan. As a result, we conducted most of the user interviews and usability testing remotely
The accidental benefit was that we got to see how participants used the system at their home - the “natural environment”. We saw that some participants had to take care of their children while participating in the usability testing session
One participant asked us before the session “Can I use my phone? I am taking care of my child and my phone is more accessible.” This observation directly inspired us to go with the mobile-first approach