Going out in a rainy day is a common scenario in daily life. According to a research at New York, annual amount of rainy days in New York is 121 days. Therefore, experience in raining weather becomes a critical topic in daily experience.
Personally, it is common to find it difficult to answer a phone or find a navigation in a windy, stormy Chicago suburban. In the meanwhile, when it is hard for adults, it is harder for children. Therefore, I decided to study the challenges children are facing in rainy days.
The difficulty of this project is to study children’s thoughts and behavior in a particular weather. Direct conversations and surveys are hard to proceed with children, but are accessible with their parents.
To take a grasp of how children’s life pattern in raining days, I took a survey at my brothers’ early education center among parents about their children’s challenges in raining days and their concerns with the issue.
According to the survey, I found several obstacles children meet in rainy days, as well as struggles parents have when their children alone in rain, so I defined 2 user groups: children and parents.
1. Survey of parents plus observation of children showed children's constraints and obstacles in rainy days.
2. Based on results of survey, in regarding with the challenge children meet in rainy days, parents also have struggles.
Creating persona helps recognizes different requirements and goals for different user groups I am designing for.
I interviewed a mother and her son from the survey group regarding with their real experiences, their concerns, as well as their expectations about raining weather. Based on the results of all research approach, a persona board is created.
A brainstorming session on how we could ensure children safety when they are using umbrella in raining weather and how parents can help with this process with feedback.
Starting from the user group and corresponding interactive environment, several ideas are generated to improve the interactions between children, parents and environment in raining days.
22 ideas are filtered and 8 of them are kept in consideration of Technology feasibility and User accessibility.
Based on 8 ideas of improving main and second users’ current experience, I generate 4 main solutions to integrate all selected ideas into a product.
