FOSTER PROJECT



In this project, we are exploring ways to design technology that promotes healing and care for young people who have experienced foster care in Massachusetts. Our methodologies draw on design justice, trauma-informed design, and human-centered design frameworks - centering the perspectives and experiences of young people who have been in foster care, prioritizing reciprocity and safety, and following an iterative prototyping process.


ROLE 


UX Research and Design Intern

TEAM


Affective Computing Group @MIT Media Lab

TOOLS


Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe XD
Miro
Zotero
NVIVO

TIMELINE


8 Weeks




PROCESS HIGHLIGHTS


User Research   >   Ideation   >   Interviews & Iteration   >   Prototyping   >   Testing




PROBLEM STATEMENT


This project aimed at creating a web and mobile application that would cater to foster youth in America. Because of the specific vulnerabilities that may come with our target population, our methodologies drew on design justice, trauma-informed design, and human-centered frameworks, centering the perspectives and experiences of young people who have been in foster care, with an emphasis on prioritizing reciprocity and safety. Based on background research and interviews with current foster youth, a common theme amongst these youth was their desire for peer-to-peer connection, with people who actually get them. They are put through an underfunded and poorly developed system and go through multiple social workers up until they’re 18. Most of these youth do not have stable families and households they can rely on, leaving them feeling isolated and lonely. The main suggestion these youth pushed was an anonymous forum-style platform that provides a space for youth to connect with others, like them, in the community, however, with extra safeguarding measures to eliminate potential risk or harm. So, we wanted to create just that.

BACKGROUND &  RESEARCH


Psychological well-being defined using Marty Seligman’s PERMA model.
P - positive emotion: includes things like hope, interest, joy, love, compassion, pride, amusement and gratitude
E - engagement: Flow, living in the present and being focused on the task at hand
R - positive relationships: feeling supported, loved and valued by others
M - meaning: having a sense of belonging and feeling like you are contributing to something greater than ourselves
A - accomplishment: working hard and having a passion for reaching goals
 
Some key findings based on user research include existing information on attachment relationships among foster youth. Something worth noting is that foster youth with natural non-kin mentoring relationships (an unrelated adult willing to listen and guide them) experience less stress and depressive symptoms. Research found that consistency, longevity, trust, support are all important to aging out foster youth. Similarities, respect, and understanding are also important factors of good natural mentoring relationship. Studies also suggest that long standing, consistent connections with family members or with formal (ie. teacher, coach) and informal (ie. godparents, friends’ parents) relationships contribute to positive functioning and well-being. All our background research aligns with what we found to be the needs and desires of foster youth in our interviews. 

Challenges in foster care include:
    • Navigating foster care system bureaucracies to get drivers license
    • Going through foster care system requirements to have sleepovers or go on trips
    • Having to move from home to home while in foster care
    • Interpersonal issues with foster care providers, biological families, social workers, case workers or therapists
Challenges after foster care include:
    • Budgeting
    • Getting an apartment (without a cosigner)
    • Navigating college alone
    • Applying for public assistance programs

Market Research:
At the time of our research, only a few platforms  had digital tools geared towards foster youth, and both are structured around sharing resources. There are also peer support platforms, the encompassed the forum styles feature, such as Reddit and Facebook, which users can create and provide spaces for youth to connect with others in the community. However, many of these platforms are public platforms, which may expose youth to high risk situations online, involving interactions with unsafe people. A potential effective socio-technical intervention to empower foster youth against these risks are pre-enrollment surveys and having youth co-designing safeguarding measures first-hand.  

Problems with current platforms for our user population:
  • As adult participants put together these databases, younger participants (teens) noted that they are boring
  • Most foster youth that we asked had not heard of any of these existing resources to get help while in foster care
  • High risk vulnerabilities for foster youth on online public platforms



Dr. Seligman’s PERMA Model



Existing tools geared towards foster youth


  • iFoster - has an online community but is a space for care providers and transition-age/former foster youth, not specifically for current foster youth
  • Think of Us
  • FosterClub
  • Youth Matters


IDEATION


Significant pain point for young people in foster care: not having enough social support while navigating challenges in foster care and after transitioning out of foster care
  • Young people in foster care are often placed outside of their community and are often moved around to 4+ foster homes. This (and other factors) results in a loss of social support (family, school community, friends) for young people in foster care
  • Restrictive foster care rules make it difficult to form connections with peers while in foster care
  • Existing in-person adult supports (like social workers or case managers) can be slow and disappear after a young person transitions out of foster care
  • Young people don’t know many others who have experience with foster care, and even when they do they do not always feel comfortable asking for support/being vulnerable. Those who have connected with others who have been in foster care found it helpful
  • Online support forums (like Quora or Reddit) are prone to bias and bullying, and social media platforms like Facebook result in unhelpful advice since family/friends there don’t have experience with foster care


INITIAL WIREFRAMES


Our testing population included volunteers from foster youth programs in Massachusetts, as our project collaborated with Friends of the Children Boston and JRI Foster Care Program. 


USER FEEDBACK


The data from Zoom interview transcripts were uploaded to NVivo and coded using a thematic analysis framework. This entailed first coding the initial themes that stood out, then reviewing these themes and reorganizing the data based on the patterns that were emerging (creating nested codes and condensing overlapping codes as needed). To ensure inter-rater reliability, multiple people coded part of the data independently and then our codes were compared with each other. In the first round of our coding process, we had significant differences. After discussion, we noticed this was due to difference in understanding and interpretation of our codebook. We felt that some of the codes in our codebook were insufficient and overall too encompassing to describe the nuanced interaction that foster youth had mentioned in their interviews. These codes failed characterize the challenge and needs that youth had expressed. Therefore, we broke down the codes into more detailed categories to better describe  nuanced interactions, which significantly increased our Cohen’s Kappa, indicating a higher inter-rater reliability.



Creating postcard feedback (Web screen):
  • P1
    • Feels like a lot of effort to create and read postcards, easier to just send a message
    • Would want to use postcards to give motivation to others who have had similar experiences
  • P2
    • Would sometimes want to send postcards to new people or to people they know
    • Pictures make them want to respond

Forum feedback (Phone screen):
  • P1
    • Like the ability to add experiences, goals and interests. Felt like the options were relatable
    • Would want to ask questions on the platform, like how do I open a bank account, or show me where something is
    • Would not want to share personal stuff on the platform
    • Was not interested in the video/reflection tab, felt like the forum was what they were there for
    • Felt that the profile had too much information on it - wouldn’t want to share all of that with strangers
  • P2
    • Would use the platform to share about their experience and give advice to others
    • Would want to add reactions that can be used on posts
    • Would be interested in saying they reached a goal and in writing a reflection, to motivate others
    • Likes having a profile to see how far you’ve come and show others what you’ve been through. Would add a bio
    • Likes the categories you can choose from (the communities)
    • Would add a feed that includes content from all your communities



VISUAL DESIGNS


With prototyping, we took inspiration from existing social platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit and created mockups and wireframes for the ideas. Through many rounds of iterations, here are some screens that I designed. We had many conceptual ideas, many that we did not have the logistics of down, so it was especially difficult creating high-fidelity prototypes of these half-fleshed out ideas. Taking into account the feedback we got from showing mockups in interviews and novel ideas that we had, I created the initial prototypes of our screens using Adobe XD. At the end of my internship, these screens were getting ready to be shown to participants for another round of prototyping interviews.

Since the project had just recently started from scratch, the app did not have a name, brand, or logo. We spent many ideation sessions coming up with how we wanted the application to be displayed- we ultimately chose a green colour as the main accent colour to represent safety and growth. For the name, we wanted something that wasn’t too long, didn’t contain the word foster in it, was super simple, and of course, wasn’t something that already existed. Based on these criteria, we came up with Bring up, iGrow, and Lift Up. With these three names, we really thought about the peer support users would get from each other and wanted our name to reflect that. In the logo design, we also thought the simpler, the better. Though it is still a work in progress, we have a few prototype designs that we’ve come up with that incorporate our green colour and the idea of support and growth, with the leaf. 


HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPE


Based on the research we did and initial prototype testing, the main goal of our design came from wanting to keep things simple yet engaging. A lot of our design inspiration came from an assortment of current applications that have already achieved this. These applications included those like Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Keeping the design intuitive and simple allows for information on the interface to not be overwhelming. In terms of color, we chose to use a light green as the main accent colour. After careful consideration, we decided on this color as we think it is pretty gender neutral and it is usually a symbol for freshness and growth, which we wanted our platform to be associated with. In addition, because our target audience is foster youth, and based on our initial wireframe prototype testing, they expressed that color was an important factor for the app, we wanted to incorporate colours without making the interface too messy, this is why we chose to use different main colors for the different communities and a pastel color palette.  

MY ROLE & MOTIVATIONS


I came across the Foster Project and the role description seemed to align with everything that I was looking for- it was the perfect intersection between the disciplines that I am passionate about, the research connects both the social-psychology aspect as well as design and media arts and sciences. This project aimed at designing technology that promoted healing and care for young people who have experienced foster care in Massachusetts. As the project was still in its very beginning phases at the time, there were a lot of initial research and decisions that I was able to contribute to. I was able to interact with all parts of the design process. The entire basis of the project was something that I could heavily relate to, and I was super happy to see that there were opportunities for me to apply skills that I had learned in school to a topic that I am passionate about.

A typical day as an intern consisted of a lot of remote and asynchronous work. As prototyping interviews happened over Zoom, we would transcribe and code them. The majority of my time was spent on doing research and designing screens for different rounds of prototype testing. The remainder of my time would be dedicated to doing more background research and contributing to our paper’s  literature review.

REFLECTIONS


A takeaway I gained from this experience includes familiarizing myself with the entire design process, incorporating psychology concepts, trauma-informed design, user-centric research, into the entire human-centered approach process.  Some skills that I gained from this experience include designing for mobile apps and prototyping using Adobe XD, as well as relearning how to use Adobe Illustrator. 

Another takeaway that I had from this internship is that UX researchers and designers are definitely always learning on the job. You don’t have to be the top expert in everything UX to break into this field. Whether it be new information from the research they’re doing or new elements for accessible design, there is always something new that comes out in the research or design worlds that will always keep the field of UX dynamic. So as someone in UX, it’s super beneficial to be flexible and adaptable. I enjoyed being introduced into the field and being able to do a wide variety of things and explore different types of work throughout the process!