Case Study: User Experience Research on Household Media Consumption Controls

Experience research is about understanding people—their needs, wants, motivations, behaviors, and priorities. The goal is to identify problems that people care about. Then use that information to develop products and services that make a difference. This, in turn, helps companies create user experiences that meet their customer’s needs.  

This case study is about the research for a product idea a company was considering.

The Ask

The client was exploring developing a new digital product. The product would allow multi-generational families to set media consumption preferences and controls.

Sometimes a client may be looking to develop something specific. Before leaping into the design of a product, it’s important to understand: 

• What is the problem we want to solve?

• What questions do we have?
• What information do we need?
• What constraints do we need to take into consideration? 

Additionally, it’s important to understand the business goals and objectives. For example, is the business trying to solve a social problem that aligns with its mission? Are they trying to add a new product line that could increase their profit margins? It could be both, but the answer can influence the direction of the research. The key to a successful research project is aligning the executive team around the research goals and objectives.

Research method

Clarity around the “what” and “why” of a project is critical to determine the best research methods. In this case, we chose two types of research:

• primary: interviews with potential customers
• secondary: information from third-party resources on current technology.

We began with secondary research, gathering information from third-party resources. This helped us understand the current products available and their features and constraints. 

Through this research, we learned that there are several trusted independent resources for parents to turn to for information on controlling their children’s media consumption. These sources include, among others:

• The Pew Research Center
• Healthy Children
• Common Sense Media
• National Parent Products Award
• The National Parenting Center
• Internet Safety 101

These sources list the pros and cons of certain products and make recommendations. They also note what technologies and features they do and don’t recommend and why.

We collected qualitative data from these sources as well as technical publications such as PC Magazine. We also read reviews in social media forums discussing the various parental controls for media consumption. Once we gathered this information, we prepared a competitive analysis of the top products.

Competitive analysis

The competitive analysis is a visual representation of the top competitors. It includes the features offered by the various platforms and gaps in the products. We also provided information on what the companies describe as their value proposition. Interestingly, two of the companies were well-known brands in computer virus protection. Some of the technology magazines recognized these brands for their products, but none of the independent sources did.

As part of this competitive analysis, we discovered some of the product constraints. For example, some are compatible with Apple products but not with Android. Others work with the Google Chrome browser, but not others.

We also looked at the usability of the digital platform, where possible. We did this to understand the user interface, ease of use, and where challenges exist within them. 

Primary research

Our research also entailed interviews with potential customers. The research plan included:

• Screener survey: to ensure we were capturing our target audience
• Research goals: to address the question “What do we want to accomplish?”
• Interview learning objectives: to answer the question “What do we want to learn?”
• Interview guide: to collect household information and routines, the end-user decision making journey, and the product experience

We designed the interview guide to help us understand the customer’s journey. This includes product discovery and research, shopping for and buying a product, using the product, and following up with a brand. We also captured their customer experience, to measure how they feel about a product and/or company. It includes the emotional, physical, and psychological connection they have with a brand.

Synthesize insights

After conducting interviews, we used empathy maps to generate insights from the responses. The empathy maps highlight key takeaways from what an interviewee says, does, thinks and feels.

We plotted this information into the different stages of the customer journey—awareness, consideration, acquisition, and experience.

The customer journey map is an illuminating process to understand the customer’s goals. When you compare the competitive analysis to the customer journey, you can see how existing products support or fail, the customer.

Findings

Through the user interviews we discovered:

• The mother is the primary administrator of the parental controls.  
• Parents are overwhelmed with a constant need to evaluate the safety of apps, games, and programs brought to their attention by their children. 
• A parent’s primary goal is for their children to learn to be responsible on the internet and with texting—to understand the dangers and to use critical thinking 
• A big pain point for parents is confronting their children when they’re not following the limits set on media consumption. The arguments that pursue are very stressful.
• Working parents are juggling a lot. They’re mentally overloaded with managing their work and family lives. The simpler the use of a product the better. 
• Since COVID, many children are less interested in passive screen time (e.g. TV watching) and more interested in engaging with friends online.

Through secondary research, we discovered:

• Most of the existing platforms are set up like corporate business intelligence platforms. They have lots of features, some necessary, some not.  
• Existing solutions are set up to block and tackle. They block children from different sites and set limits on the amount of time they can spend using social media. The platforms alert parents when a child accesses a blocked site or exceeds their time. 

Questions the company is now exploring:

• How might we shift the dynamic of existing parental controls from block and tackle to empowering kids to be more responsible in their use of social media? Instead of a tool that captures infractions, how can the tool reward responsible behavior and critical thinking?  
• What can we learn from existing household digital controls that are easy to use and create a great experience?  

Next step: designing a platform that creates a new user experience that engages children. In this experience, they’re learning, rewarded, and parents celebrate their success.

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