Adoption

A human-centered design interactive advertising campaign to raise child adoption awareness.
My interest in the topic, Child adoption, brought me to work on research to ideation project. The outcome of the research was broad and I worked on a number of needs in this area in detail. In my research, I realized that the number one need in this area is rising awareness among people about the topic.

This case study shows the results of the research and iterative testings around the final idea.

ROLE

Research - Ideation - Prototype - User Testing

01

Project Definition and Research

Secondary Research Analysis

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31,197 children photos listed on AdoptUSKids now live with permanent families.
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Each year, nearly 20,000 teens age out of foster care without a permanent family.

Problem Statement

How might we encourage people to be more sensitive and aware of child adoption?

The Goal

The goal of this project is to encourage regular people to get engaged with the children who need families to support them.

Concept

Create a system that the children who are in need of a new home, create paper planes, draw on them and mail them out to people's homes, as a simple act of kindness.

Interviews

one

Emphasized the importance of paying attention to the need for awareness and encouraging people to support children.

two

The number of children in need of a family in California is 60,000 and the number of resource families is not even close to this number.

three

Regular families don't have enough information about adoption or foster care.

02

User Experience and User Testing

Persona One

Lucas

9 Years Old | South Bay San Francisco
Lucas has been in a foster home for 4 months. He is very inquisitive and creative, Lucas has a natural curiosity about the world and is willing to try just about any new thing.

Lucas is looking for a family that can share the love with him and preferably have pets.

scenario

Lucas

The child in need of a family

Maria

Lucas's case worker
Lucas is 9 years old. Maria is responsible for taking care of his case and finding a new family to live with. He is now living in a temporary foster home and Maria is determined to find a new family to support him permanently.

Maria is working on documenting Lucas's interest to put his picture up on the adoptUsKids website.

Process

Characters

Lucas: 9yo child
Maria: Case worker

Test One

Lucas colors the paper plane and play with it a bit and gives it to Maria.

Testing method: Field testing

Goals

Test the participation of the child
To test the outcome (the colored paper plane).
To test the Child engagement with the activity,
Is there a distraction or bonds between the adult and the kid during the activity.

Findings

The kid didn't agree on taking making a paper plane with his beautifully done painting.
The kid didn't pay attention to around him as he was painting. He wasn't responding to questions. (it can differ between the children).

Test Two

Lucas colors the paper plane and play with it a bit and gives it to Maria.

Testing method: Field testing

Goals

If the kid feels comfortable to give away his painting when he creates a paper plane origami?

Findings

The kid was comfortable coloring the paper plane. He built the paper plane and then colored it. I explained that I'm gonna need it afterward and he was clear that he doesn't want to spend that much time on coloring it.

Test Three

Kids' activity at the school. Kids have a painting class and the teacher gives them the subject of child adoption.

Testing method: Field testing

Goals

To test how it looks like to change the activity direction as a school project.
What is the teacher's response?
What are the students' respond?
What would be the conversation?

Findings

3 out of 3 parents think that it's a good idea to aware of their children about the adoption.
3 out of 4 children(primary school) didn't know what adoption is.
The teacher didn't feel comfortable to open the adoption topic in the class.

Persona Two

The Family

Background

Stewart family:
Mother: 38yo | Architect, Educated
Father: 42yo | Business owner, Educated
The kid: 10yo |Boy, Special needs
Family income: 200k/yr
Lucas has been in a foster home for 4 months. He is very inquisitive and creative, Lucas has a natural curiosity about the world and is willing to try just about any new thing.

Lucas is looking for a family that can share the love with him and preferably have pets.

The mother's need

She wants her son to have a friend and have someone on his age to support him when he grows up.

The father's need

The father thinks if they had another child, there would be less pressure on their first child. He is not very happy with her wife being too supportive of their son.

The child

The child: He doesn't think he wants a sibling, but he likes having friends and hanging out with them.

scenario

Stewart family receives a box in their mailbox. The mother opens the box and reads the information.

Process

Characters

Family members

Test One

She opens the box, sees the origami and reads the card.

Testing method: Field testing

Goals

Test the family reaction
Test the impact of the paper plane

Findings

It was very powerful for the mother to see the airplane as a handcrafted piece of work of a child in need.
The next step wasn't very clear to the mom. She expected to get information about this particular child.

Test Two

She goes to the website and reads through the information

Testing method: Field testing

Goals

To test the card's information clarity.
To test if the information creates action.

Findings

The message is clear
The action was made
The user checked the website and was involved with it for about 15 minutes
She said she will check the website and will read through the children’s biographies later on.

Results

During the testings, I observed the users were very curious when they found out that there is a website that lists the children with their information and pictures there.

The reaction to the origami was as expected. All the users seemed focused and thoughtful when they were reading the card and found out that the origami was made and colored by an actual child.

All 3 users asked questions to follow up on how to adopt a child and how the system works.
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