UNICEF Child Day
Online event for National Day of the Child that discusses child rights and increases awareness, engagement, and action
Problem
Every day young people's rights are being violated and unspoken for. Many children and youth are unaware of their rights and how they can advocate for them.
HOW MIGHT WE
increase engagement and awareness of child rights through the 2021 Canadian Youth Activism Summit?
*This problem was presented to us by our client
Evaluation
COVID Restrictions
Children are less likely to want to get involved in the event if it is on a Saturday and constrained within COVID restrictions.
Legal Restrictions
Another challenge we faced was not being able to interview children directly because of legal restrictions.
Throughout the process, there were some challenges...
These challenges forced us to think outside the box and come up with a novel and exciting solution. The execution of this event could have a huge impact on how children view and advocate their rights due to the interactivity and enjoyable nature of the event. This solution’s practicality allows it to be implemented this coming November for the national day of the child. Imagining a better future for kids all over Canada doesn’t have to be so far-fetched when we bring youth together and give them the tools to pave the way to a better and brighter future. This starts with awareness, engagement, action, and the Youth Advocacy Event!
Unfortunately, due to the nature of the project in an institutional setting we had to leave the project off here and the solution was not implemented.
Timeline
02.21 - 04.21
Team
Ali Popal
Christina Lucas (me)
Nates Lavrisa
My Role
UX designer + UX researcher
Solution
Advertising
01
Youth will find out about the day through a number of possible ways such as their teachers, the Google Doodle, or YouTube ads.
Onboarding
02
Once they sign up via the UNICEF website, they would receive reminder emails with the information for the day. Youth will log on, create an avatar, get introduced to the event, and how the day will run.
Day Event
03
The actual event would include challenges, speakers, a concert, and time to socialize. Children would have the opportunity to come and go as they please because we understand that online events can be draining.
End of the Day
04
As the day comes to an end youth will complete a survey and the winners of the challenges will be announced.
Post Engagement
05
Youth would receive their prizes and take-home activities to encourage them to continue to advocate for their rights and stay involved.
Understanding the Problem
Secondary Research
We started off by conducting secondary research about child rights, UNICEF, and the Nation Day of the Child. We gathered information individually and then shared our findings. This diverge and converge method allowed for each person's voice to be heard and unique perspectives to be formed.
Key Insights:
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Online UNICEF events perform poorly compared to in-person events
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Youth are not aware of their rights or how to advocate for them
Understanding the User
Empathy & Understand
Next, we created three empathy maps and a value proposition canvas to better understand our users. This led us to find gaps in our understanding and what further research needed to be conducted.
Key Insights:
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Youth want to see the direct effect of their efforts
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Youth don't understand their rights or how to advocate for them
These insights needed to be validated through user interviews.
Validating Research Insights
Primary Research
We conducted 6 interviews with young adults, teachers, youth pastors, and parents. We focused on interviewing those who work with youth regularly to get the most relevant information. Our interviewees provided us with great insights into what inspires, excites, and motivates youth to get involved.
Key Insights:
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Youth enjoy competition and social engagement
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Youth do not know about their rights. Some adults don't even know about children's rights.
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Youth need to see the direct value in being engaged
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Youth are more engaged in activities on weekdays
Turning our insights into action
Ideation
We used our insights and understanding gained from our research to brainstorm many ideas for the day event.
Affinity Mapping
After narrowing down our ideas, we sorted them into the “5 es”. These are excitement, entry, engagement, exit, and extension.
Idea:
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An online event structured like a video game
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Avatars, challenges, rewards
We researched and tested multiple online platforms to host the event. We decided on Gather Town because of its variety of features and simplicity of use.
Measuring success:
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A successful event needs to extend beyond the day to before and after the event
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A successful day will increase engagement and awareness of child rights
Validating our Design
Prototyping and Testing
During the prototyping phase, we created 6 story maps. One for the entire event, and one for each section of the event. We conducted 12 user tests, using the story maps. We first had the participants think out loud while running through the maps and then asked them open-ended questions about each step.
Key Insights:
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Logistics of handling a shipped box of goods might be too difficult
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Moderating a room full of children and preventing bullying/inappropriate behaviour needs to be addressed
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Advertising methods have to be very effective or else they would be useless
We made changes to our design based on these new insights as well as areas that could still be improved in the future due to limited time constraints.
Relationships are the top way to engage
Kids probably don't have a good idea or knowledge of what their rights are as that information is not easily accessible to them or told to them.
In general, youth are passionate about their identity and their own autonomy.