LiveMore ScreenLess
Promoting balanced and intentional use of technology.
Client: LiveMore ScreenLess is a Minnesota non-profit organization that advocates and promotes digital wellbeing for and with young people through a collaborative and comprehensive community approach.
Role: Lead UX Researcher, UX Designer (Key Feature Design).
Methods: Stakeholder Meeting, Website Inventory, Website Audit, Raw Data Collection, Synthesis, Card Sorting, Information Architecture, Moderated Usability Testing, Mid-Fidelity Wireframing, Findings & Recommendations.
Tools: Figma, Figjam, Zoom.
Teammates: Jamie Tan, Alex Hansen
The Problem
In June of 2021, Minnesota passed the nation’s first digital wellbeing bill. LiveMore ScreenLess received funding from this piece of legislature to accelerate the work they’ve already been doing to promote digital wellbeing. Part of this funding will go toward building a digital resource library that will help spread awareness to the general public, with an emphasis on reaching youth, parents/caretakers/families, and educators.
How can LiveMore ScreenLess build a digital resource library that houses the best resources, tips, and tools in a way that is accessible and engaging to a broad and diverse group of users?
The Deep Dive
To begin, my teammates and I needed to better familiarize ourselves with LiveMore ScreenLess and the scope of the project. We did this by perusing the organization’s current website, sifting through client-provided research materials, and conducting a competitive analysis. After reconvening, we conducted a know, don’t know, assume activity to gather and prioritize questions in preparation for our Stakeholder interview.
The Stakeholder Interview
It was a true pleasure meeting with one of the LiveMore ScreenLess founders, Maree Hampton, and her team. They answered our team’s questions and provided us with additional materials to aid in our research and designs.
The Card Sort
LiveMore ScreenLess compiled a variety of research publications, books, videos, podcasts, and tools they’d like to include in their digital wellbeing resource library. Card sorting is a research technique used to aid in organizing a large quantity of information, especially when how to organize the information is unclear. It proved helpful for this project!
I used UXtweak to set up this card sort by placing names of specific resources onto “cards”, as shown in left column of the image above. Then I created categories for participants to place cards within. These are based on LiveMore ScreenLess Data Brief categories and patterns in research findings from the provided LiveMore ScreenLess FAQ sheet.
The table above represents how many users placed specific cards into each category. As you can see, patterns emerged! Still, many cards were placed into more than one category. Based on this, my recommendation is to allow users to filter resources in multiple ways, and place certain resources into multiple categories.
Usability Testing
My teammates and I conducted usability tests of LiveMore ScreenLess’ current website. We interviewed primary users to gain a better understanding of what LiveMore ScreenLess is doing that’s currently working, but also learn what users need, want, and expect from a digital wellbeing resource library.
We gained valuable insights from all participants. One takeaway that stuck with me — we found every person interviewed was concerned with their personal relationship with technology. They admitted “needing to cut down” their screen time, and seemed to carry real feelings of guilt and embarrassment around their screen time overuse. Based on these user insights I decided to build a “My Digital Wellbeing” assessment within the library.
Key Feature Design
The “My Digital Wellbeing” assessment would be made available to all users. A survey like this would help users gain a better understanding of their personal relationship with technology. It would include 5-10 prompts, written around research backed problem areas, like sleep, cyber-bullying, mental health, among others. For example: “At night I stay on my phone instead of going to sleep…”
The user would select “Never, Sometimes, Often, or Always”, whichever resonates with them depending on the prompt. Resources could then be tailored to the user based on their answers given. These tailored resources and tools would populate on the final page below the user’s “My Digital Wellbeing” score.
I conducted a round of usability tests on this tool. Although there was some confusion around the scoring system, I found that overall test participants think this is a really valuable feature.
The Next Steps
I recommend LiveMore ScreenLess move forward with the following steps:
Finalize survey prompts and My Digital Wellness scoring system.
Conduct another round of usability tests on design revisions.
Launch My Digital Wellbeing Tool!
After launching, LiveMore ScreenLess could use the My Digital Wellbeing results to better identify users engaging with the resource library, and their users relationship to technology. They can also use these results to inform their future outreach efforts.
The Conclusion
I presented my research, findings, and key feature designs to Prime Digital Academy and LiveMore ScreenLess. In addition, I prepared a client report compiling: Usability/Accessibility Audit I conducted of their current site, Card Sort Results (including a step-by-step of how to conduct a card sort), along with my Presentation Slides. View the full report, below.
Between collaborating with LiveMore ScreenLess on their future library designs, and working alongside teammates Alex & Jamie, this was an incredibly gratifying project. LiveMore ScreenLess was appreciative of our work and I can’t wait to see how our research, recommendations, and designs inform their launched product.