Devi
Nov 2020 - Feb 2021
User Experience Design | User Interface Design
To design the UX strategy and design intervention for Devi - the flagship project of the NGO "Collective Consciousness" - that addresses the critical menstrual health and hygiene challenges in India.
Objective
Skills & Tools Used
Design research - creation of research strategy and research interview protocols, UX Strategy, UI Design // Figma, Adobe Photoshop
Research
User Group
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Children of daily-wage workers and domestic workers
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Children's’ parents
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Teachers in local government schools (as these were the schools the children studied in)
Both boys and girls were interviewed. All users came from lower socioeconomic
backgrounds from peri-urban areas of Bangalore, Karnataka.
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The Devi team was also interviewed to understand their past experience with conducting classes on menstrual health & hygiene for the user group.
Research Methods
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One-on-one user interviews (with children, parents and govt. school teachers).
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Focus group discussions (with children during school hours).
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Participant observation (during classes in school).
Research Goals
All user groups were interviewed to understand:
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The context of the child’s daily life - their financial background, their daily schedule, roles & responsibilities in their house.
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The child’s social life - how they spend time with their friends, what they talk about, how much they confide in their friends about personal matters.
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Family life and the relationship the children have with their parents.
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School life - children’s interest and engagement levels in school, whether the teachers talk about menstrual health and hygiene, children’s response to talks about such “taboo” topics.
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Access to technology - if and how much access the children have to technology, to what extent can they confidently use it, what they use it for (social media/games/chatting).
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Current knowledge about menstrual health and hygiene - who imparts it, how much the children understand, the success of these sessions.
Research Constraints
Due to COVID-19, I was not able to travel to the client location, where research was limited to rural and peri-urban areas around Bangalore. Therefore, I created the research protocol based on the above mentioned goals and handed it to the Devi team in Bangalore, who relayed back information from their interviews. Precautions were taken to ensure safety of all parties involved.
Important Insights
Sessions on menstrual health & hygiene are rarely conducted by the schools, and there is low level of engagement from the children. This is due to the format of the sessions - a one-way presentation by the female teachers, often given only to female students.
Although interested, children also display awkwardness, fear and shyness in participating and clarifying doubts. The topic of menstrual health & hygiene is regarded as taboo in Indian society, which further prevents children from openly and safely accessing information about it, and makes teachers awkward while teaching it.
Children do not often have access to their parents’ mobile phones, but when they do, they display curiosity and some confidence in exploring the internet, and often play a lot of online games.
Leverage Points
Taking into stock the research insights and their current resources, Team Devi wanted to leverage the following factors to create a different learning experience for children:
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Devi had already developed a comprehensive syllabus regarding menstrual health & hygiene, which they were imparting to their target user group through small classroom sessions.
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Children displayed interest in playing online games, and would often compare high scores with their friends.
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Devi has, at hand, access to some technology like digital tablets and laptops.
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Design Solution
A website was designed to impart education on menstrual health and hygiene to children, that makes use of the designed syllabus to teach children through the form of online games, thereby gamifying the entire learning experience.
Why a website?
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It leverages children’s interest in online games to teach them about something they are interested in, but afraid to ask for more information on.
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Gamifying the learning experience makes it more interactive and brings about higher engagement, as the topic can now be seen through the lens of “fun” instead of “taboo.”
Testing &
Implementation
Strategy
Testing was conducted with students in government schools (name redacted for privacy reasons) in Bangalore, where Team Devi volunteers conducted classes with the aid of initial prototypes of the website. Even with initial testings, it was clear that students were fascinated by the visuals of the game and understood how to play the games after some explanation. Interaction increased during classes and the teachers agreed that the content was age appropriate and good for the students.
Images from the testing session, taken from Devi's official Instagram account.
Implementation strategy -
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The syllabus would be divided into individual lessons. The learning objective of each lesson would form the basis of a game. Thus, there is atleast one game per lesson.
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Team Devi would make use of their volunteers’ already existing teaching experience and the digital tablets to engage students in schools through a hybrid method of learning - pairing the digital games with the regular lecture format of teaching.
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Eventually, the website would be rolled out for access to everyone on their phones.
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Schools and children would be onboarded to the website via an internal admin system, enabling better monitoring of the learning of the students and success rate of the platform.