Experian

Discovering and validating product opportunities

Experian was looking to conduct field research with parents in order to understand and validate the problem space around how parents introduce their children to technology and how they keep them safe online. Through research, concepting, validation, and prototyping, we provided Experian with new proposed solutions and recommendations to inform their future user experiences.

Design Lead | 20 Weeks | 2019

Aligning with the Experian team

To get the project started, we developed a kick-off workshop to help us understand the problem space and align on Experian’s objectives.
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During the workshop, we walked the Experian team through a series of activities where we identified target research participants and an initial set of hypotheses.

Uncovering opportunities

To better understand the needs of parents, we needed to meet them where they were. We created a detailed research plan and began recruiting research participants who aligned with Experian’s target audience.
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We then conducted a series of 18 in-home interviews and exercises that allowed us to dig deeper into the approaches and challenges of parents, observing their behaviors and home environments.

Synthesizing our observations

We recorded over 1,600 observations on research participants’ behaviors, needs, and challenges. Through a collaborative synthesis process, we identified patterns and themes by grouping related observations and direct quotes.

We drew insights by interpreting groupings of key themes and forging connections between common needs and behaviors.

Developing user insights

Through our synthesis process, we identified user insights and developed archetypes, giving us a deep understanding of parents’ behaviors, needs, and challenges. We created journey maps for each archetype, allowing us to determine at which points during parents’ and children’s lives we could best serve.

Validating with parents

Drawing on our findings, we generated over 200 ideas and worked with Experian to downselect to two concepts to validate with users.
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To capture reactions to our proposed concepts, we developed a series of paper prototypes. We walked users though our concepts, gathering feedback that allowed us to assess the value of each concept and validate key features.

Concepts that resonate

Benchmark

A tool to help parents anticipate and prepare for their children’s evolving digital lives. To get started, parents take a quiz about their children’s and their own digital and real-world activities. With that information, Experian personalizes a timeline with key milestones in their children’s digital immersion.

Friendscape

A tool to help parents visualize and understand their children’s growing digital networks. Friendscape connects to social and gaming accounts, as well as syncs with contacts, to provide relevant aggregated data to parents. With this information, parents are provided with an overview of their children’s social network.

A foundation for future experiences

Based on our synthesis, we established two proposed product concepts as well as a set of design principles and recommendations for moving each concept forward.

Our principles will act as a foundation for Experian’s teams as they evolve their user experiences and create new, innovative product offerings.