On this week we had to select one domain of interest to focus on, then to choose one problem within that domain and a persona that represents our main use case user.
We chose to focus on Children and Teenagers Online Hazards as our main domain for the year. This is a new domain (it wasn't a part of our three domains from last week) that stemmed from our research and processing.
The Problem
The problem we chose to deal with is that children and teenagers are exposed to great hazards online, and suffer from a lack of guidance and protection to identify and deal with those hazards.
The technological and mental gap between generations is getting bigger, and causing a very poor ability for parents to understand their children difficulties, influence them and acting on time if needed.
Validations
In order to choose, understand and specialize the problem, we continued our interviews of relevant personas (children and teenagers at ages 8 to 16, and parents) and research online to get more validations about the problem.
Quotes from interviews:
(13 y.o boy) "I play a game called "Manga", it's not a violent game. In the game I need to find the murderers in town and kill them. It's not really violent because the characters are all illustrated and there are no weapons."
(15 y.o girl) "My Instagram account was hacked because I delivered personal information on an app called 'House Party'."
(13 y.o boy) "Shaming and boycott are different things. I don't feel like there is anything you can do to prevent it."
(Mother to a 14 y.o girl) "My daughter participated a party and witnessed a severe sexual harassment. Only the good relationship between us made her call me to pick her up. The parents of other girls that participated the party learned about the occasion from me and not their children.
(15 y.o boy) "I've witnessed a few occasions of shaming and boycott on Instagram. I'm sure the boy's parents don't even know about it."
(17 y.o girl) "On a zoom lecture, suddenly some kids started to curse the teacher and smoke on camera."
(15 y.o girl) "I meet new friends at 'House Party' app. People that I don't know can also join the chat."
Relevant studies and articles:
Persona
Another precision we made was to identify a relevant persona.
We struggled the question who is the main "hero" of the problem - the children and teenagers or the parents? Finally we chose to focus on the children and teenagers, since the problem grew from their current lifestyle and actions.
Meet Neta, our main presona:
