Case study: UX Research on how to make climate change understandable to kids
How do we make complex topics easy for kids?
This research was an assignment project I did within 2 days.
Problem Brief📃
The goal of this assignment is to explore ideas on how to build a product experience that could nudge young folks( 5–10 years)to understand what the climate crisis is, understand what the consequences are, take informed actions and also potentially influence others to reduce their carbon footprint.
Problem Statement 🔨
How do we make bigger issues comprehensible for our future generations to understand and respond to climate change?
Secondary Research 📚
Why do we need to explain Climate Change to kids?
Children, our torchbearers, need to understand the most urgent problem to be able to tackle it.
84 percent of parents, agreed that children should be learning about climate change. Source
visit this page for in-depth secondary research
Research Plan 📝
Introduction
For this research project, we remain focused on three main areas:
- Understanding how the children aged between 5–10 years understands and consume information.
- How aware are they of the climate crisis and its impact on their future?
- We are also interested in learning how their parents(Millenials) are tackling climate change and what steps are they taking towards a sustainable future.
- We also find out how our parents educate their children.
Research method
- One-on-One in-depth User Interview.
User research objectives
- Discovering how children in middle childhood retain information.
- Revealing the current manner parents undergo to educate their children.
- Recognizing the methods parents use to tackle the problem of climate change.
- Finding the methods children are adopting to minimize the climate crises.
Participants
User Interview:
Number of participants = 6
- 3 Parents
- 3 Children
Timeline
2 days which included qualitative research, interviews, analysis, and review.
Assumptions
- Assuming that the screener questionnaire is already been rolled out and participants have been short-listed.
- Assuming that parents, as well as kids, are from Tier I and Tier II cities.
Screener Questionnaire
Criteria for Target audience:
Kids
- Age: 5–10 years
- Tier 1–2 cities
- School going kids
Parents
- Age: 24–40 years
- Tier 1–2 cities
- Education: Minimum Bachelors’ degree (both parents)
Interview Guide 👩🏻💻
Screenshots of User Interview with kids:
Insights 🧠
Data Analysis based on kids’ Interview:
Media influences and shapes kids’ thoughts and processes
- Most of the kids like to watch tv/youtube in their free time.
- All kids consumed media during the lockdown, especially youtube.
“I watch tv in my free time. I like Disney and videos on youtube on solar systems and rivers.”
P3,07,Kid
Kids have cogent awareness about PET bottles and their effect on the nature
- All the kids are aware that PET bottles are made from Plastic.
- Most of the kids discard the PET bottle after consuming soft drinks.
- All kids agree that plastic causes pollution.
“Whatever is recyclable, is recycled. What is not recycled is eaten by animals or it stays for hundreds of years and increases pollution.”
P1,09,Kid
Kids aren’t educated enough on the topic of Climate Crises
- None of the kids could define the term ‘Climate Change.
- None of the kids knew what was causing climate change.
- Most of the kids said climate change is a good thing.
- All kids said they use youtube on phones/tablets/smart TV.
- All kids had online classes.
“Climate change is a change in rains — sometimes there is normal rainfall, sometimes ice falls.”
P2,06,Kid
Kids have half knowledge about the Global Warming
- Most of the kids tried and correctly named other kinds of pollution.
- None of them could define global warming.
- Few of the kids could answer how global warming happens.
- When asked, “what will happen when the ice melts?”, most of the kids said there will be water everywhere.
- Most of the kids answered that sunlight/heat is making the ice melt.
- Most of the kids said ice melting is a bad thing.
“Nearby countries and houses will go under the mountains and water. India will be filled with water because we are right under mountains. But in faraway countries, there will be less water.”
P1,09,Kid
Kids understand what Coronavirus is and how it can be prevented
- All the kids knew what coronavirus was.
- All the kids were familiar with the guidelines to fight coronavirus.
“Wash hands, sanitize your hands ( but not all the time), sanitize before you sit, sanitize the place, maintain distance.”
P1,09,Kid
Data Analysis based on Parents’ Interview:
Parents are often busy
- Most of the parents said they don’t get free time.
“I generally don’t have free time. ”
P4,30,Parent
Parents understand the consequence of Climate change
- Most parents don’t use/avoid using plastic to tackle climate change.
- Most of the parents said that their kids would be entering into an unhealthy future.
“Their future is all about electronic gadgets which are more harmful to the planet. Battery disposal system is not in place.”
P5,38,Parent
Parents use video/ visual aids to educate their children
- Most parents use youtube to explain tough topics to their children.
- All parents said they teach complex things to their children via Youtube.
- Most of the parents said they answer kids’ questions with the help of visual aids.
“I explain the hard topics to my son by showing videos on Youtube. I find explanatory videos where they can relate. ”
P5,38,Parent
Parents agree that kids imitate their habits and are influenced by them
- All parents try and educate their kids on adopting better and sustainable practices.
- All children have picked up sustainable habits that their parents taught them.
- All parents try and instill good moral values in their children via different methods.
- All parents said that kids imitate their parents/elders at home.
- All parents agreed that whatever discussion happens around kids, influences the child.
“Home discussion influences my elder son a lot. Especially when he is around grandparents.”
P5,38,Parent
Parents agree that media has a huge influence on their kids
- All parents said youtube influences their kids the most ( this pattern has seen a drastic increase due to lockdown)
“Youtube influencers. They also follow influencers. My kid always watches youtube, even in the car. ”
P6,36,Parent
Recommendations 💡
For Kids:
- More videos on global warming were suggested and demanded by kids, as they wanted to learn deeper about the topic.
- Kids wanted different kinds of games (something they can make/build themselves) that would include complex topics like these, a game they could play regularly.
- Peer-to-peer learning is required by the kids to explore more about gardening and planting trees, to save their planet.
For Parents:
- Activity-based tutorials for kids would help parents in educating the kids about important topics like climate crises.
- Information on correct methods of planet development would make it easy for parents to educate kids.
- Parents suggested having better social media role models which would positively impact kids on adopting practices to avoid pollution of any kind.
Way Forward 📈
We have established that kids love to watch Videos: Youtube and TV. They also love to play games. A good way forward would be to combine two things they love into a viable product.
- An app experience could be developed where kids watch videos and when they finish the videos, they play games to advance to the next level.
- The games would act as a revision, of topics kids learned watching the videos.
- The games would be fun and would provide learning at the same time. (Ex: Duolingo makes learning fun via games)
- Users can advance to the next levels once they have obtained satisfactory points in the games.
- A user map can be made where the parents can see their kid's progress.
- Kids can also challenge friends and compete with them.
- The level of the game would be set according to the kid’s age.
