Case study - PicturePlan

Promt background

My son is always curious about when things will happen. He struggles to grasp the concept when I explain verbally, so I came up with a fun solution. I started creating visual calendars with adorable drawings to represent each event. This way, he can easily see and understand the schedule. And guess what? He absolutely loves it!

Later, I discovered that toddlers and young children are still learning to think abstractly. They understand things they can see and touch more easily than abstract ideas like time. Using pictures and visuals helps them make sense of new concepts by linking them to things they already know.

Personal project’s vision

PicturePlan was inspired by my curious son, who frequently asks about upcoming events, and partly by my desire for an easier way to help him understand. This experience has given me a clear vision of my needs:

• Ability to add illustrations to the calendar
• Search for illustrations by keywords
• Intuitive design
• Printing feature

With this vision in mind, I conducted a competitive analysis to assess market offerings, gather inspiration, and identify relevant features.

Competitive analysis

The results were inspiring, and the list of features expanded. Now it's time to gather insights from my target audience:

• Is there a genuine need for this product?
• What specific features do they require?
• What are their desires and preferences?
• What challenges and pain points do they face?

Design Thinking Process

Empathize

Survey

After conducting 12 surveys, I gained 3 main insights:

• I refined my target audience based on the feedback
• I identified growing interest in the product
• Some parents enjoy creating children's calendars 😍

Interview

Next, I prepared for interviews. I selected potential users and crafted a set of questions, using the survey findings to guide the interview structure.

My role was to provide a comprehensive overview of the product, its purpose, and usage. This approach allowed users to share informed thoughts based on the provided information.

After conducting 5 interviews, I confirmed interest in the product.

Consequently, the feature list expanded significantly. Users expressed desire for a family organizer focused on children's needs, a weekly activity schedule, and an illustrated to-do list for various activities (such as grocery shopping or packing a backpack), in addition to the monthly calendar.

Define

In the Define phase, I focused on deeply understanding my target users. To assist in this process, I utilized several tools:

• User persona, which represent key segments of my users and provide valuable insights into their behaviors, motivations, and pain points
• Empathy map to deepen understanding of users' perspectives, motivations, and needs
• Customer journey map to gain an even clearer view of the user's perspective
• And finally, a problem statement was identified

User persona

Empathy map 

Customer journey map

Problem statement

When children ask about upcoming events, parents need a quick, easy, and visual method to show when these events will occur. However, parents often lack the time to create such visuals or implement effective solutions. As a result, they rely on simple explanations and gestures, repeatedly answering the same questions.

Ideate

During the ideation phase, I already knew that users needed a mobile application. Here's what I accomplished:

• Storyboard to better understand users' actions

• Conducted brainstorming sessions to address user needs effectively, resulting in the creation of a mind map

• Developed a high-level user flow to visualise the user's journey through the product

Prototype

Testing

I sent the prototype to five users for independent testing. The results were encouraging — users found the prototype easy to use, clear, and intuitive. They didn't encounter any difficulties while interacting with it.

Design

Final product you can print out and use with kids 👌