PatchWall's Kids Mode feature

Xiaomi's PatchWall product has a couple of main features to market their Xiaomi TVs and Redmi TVs. We found that not many people were aware of a very useful feature called Kids Mode. This feature actually tackles a good problem that parents in today's day and age face - protecting their children from inappropriate content. PatchWall's Kids Mode does just that.

Understanding the problem

Whenever we encounter an issue we are trying to solve, it is smart to build a good foundation. We did just that by internally asking some generic but useful questions.

To understand what the feature lacked and find the issues and problems in the current version of the product, I chose to take a quantitative approach. We conducted a survey to gain insights into what, how and when do our user base encounter/use Kids Mode feature.

Research Insights

Here are some of the key insights of the quantitative survey:

• 53% of the respondents found Kids Mode feature to be relevant

• More than 75% respondents said they would consider using Kids Mode

• Entertainment and Edu. content were among the top picks for Kids consumption

• PatchWall's Kids recommendations and peer recommendations were considered when choosing content for Kids

• 37% of the respondents think kids consume content unsupervised

User Personas

Key Path Scenarios

We identified two path scenarios for accessing Kids content on PatchWall. One is while accessing Kids content as a family or just by themselves and the other while the parents play Kids content for their kids at home unattended.

Another Qualitative in-person research showed that the users are accustomed to using Kids Tab and understand it's purpose and usage. They also understand the importance of having a Kids Mode but didn’t think it was a completely safe environment for their children to allow them to use the device unsupervised.

It was important for PatchWall to address this particular insight and work on solutions to educate and inform the users on Kids Mode.

Solutions proposed

Problem 1

User is not sure which Mode they are on.

Solution 1:

Introduce a new Kids Mode logo to be more noticeable.

Solution 2:

A prominent position for the logo on the Kids Mode screens. This would help parents spot which mode their child is on at a quick glance.

Problem 2

Users aren't aware that Universal Search results within Kids Mode is child friendly.

Solution:

Use key words like 'Kids friendly search' on Universal Search to indicate to the users that searching within Kids Mode is completely friendly for children. The search results that appear here would only be of contents which are Kids related.

Kids Logo Variations

I wanted to explore creating a fun logo that children could relate. Couple of my initial concepts consisted of basic shapes (Square, triangle, circles, hexagon, trapeziums) coupled with a rounded font. These initial explorations were shown to a couple of children to understand how they would perceive it. The logos were also tested on the UI screens on the various devices before arriving at the final logo.

Low-fidelity Wireframes

Wire framing helps to explore ideas and also quickly understand what works. This process is most important to eliminate ideas, concepts, user flows and layouts that don't work. It also helps to understand any technical issues/challenges and work around them in this stage to help save time in the development phase.

Here below are the wireframes of the Mode switching screens.

High-fidelity Designs

A great step to implement the style guides and perfect the colors, fonts, spacing, layouts and other UI elements. These designs help to get a realistic view of what the product would look post development. They are also great to conduct usability tests and receive feedback on how the product will be perceived by the user.

Style Guide

Key Results post implementation

PatchWall statistics showed a 52% increase in Kids Mode Sessions in 2021 alone.

PatchWall's Kids Mode showed a 20% increase in DAU

Key Takeaways

It is extremely important to focus on user feedback and user research for key insights and pointers to improve your product. This Kids Mode project is a great example to show that small improvements in UX can actually yield great results (ROI)!