With this year long exploration we dove into the experience of a parent/guardian after all of their children have left home — leaving them with an empty nest. Our research suggested that parents experience shifts in personal/career goals and changes in communication with their children. While these changes occur, most parents continue to prioritize maintaining awareness of their child's wellbeing through checking in with their adult child, although mismatched schedules and priorities can lead to conflict. By creating a user-centered tool to facilitate parent-adult child communication, our goal is to smooth the transition for empty nesters as children fly the coop.
Project Timeline
Methods
How might we facilitate the transition to an empty nest in order to mitigate the period’s common negative effects?
Literature Review
Method Goal & Details
Primary goal was an investigation of “empty-nest syndrome” and transitional period in the research community
Reviewed 25+ academic papers
Main topics from each paper were sorted to create a conceptual framework
Conceptual Framework
Research Gaps in Literature
Empty Nest Syndrome Prevention. Much of the literature addressed how to cope with symptoms once they start, however, we wanted to get to the root of the empty nest syndrome.
“New” Empty-Nesters. Not much research sought out a user group of new empty nesters.
Transitioning from children at home to empty nest. The transition of the children leaving home is also an area lacking in research and will be of interest moving forward.
In what ways does an empty nester adjust their life after their child leaves?
What strategies do empty nesters currently employ, if any, to cope with the transitional period?
What prevents the adoption of existing technological solutions by empty-nesters?
Method Goals & Details
Goal was to understand issues that arise as a new empty nester via first hand accounts
60 minute semi-structured interviews
Before and after retrospective conversations
The role of technology in daily life
Participants
7 Participants (all female)
Ages 30s to 50s
Empty nester for 1 month to 3 years
recruited via Slack, Nextdoor, personal contacts
Diverse family makeups (i.e., single, two-parent, blended, non-primary caretaker, full-time/stay-at-home)
Interview Findings
Parents continue to prioritize child needs and wellbeing after they leave home
“The main thing was making sure that their mental health was always happy. Like I'm kind of like, are you happy? Are you OK? Are you sure you're happy?”
(P14)
“And so, you know, health, whether it's mental or physical, that trump's everything”
(P16)
New empty nesters often rely on a number of technologies in order to communicate and keep contact with adult children
“I would prefer a phone call like a voice call”
(P11)
If they don't answer me, yes, I do [check in]. They're still on life 360, even though I promised that we wouldn't be on it anymore.
(P13)
Parents wish to respect their adult child’s privacy and independence, leading to decrease in communication frequency
“Well, she's pretty independent right now. I don't really think she need us.”
(P12)
“I didn't never want to be that mom that was bothering him. So that's why I didn't just pick up and call...”
(P14)
“...we let him call us because he has such a busy schedule.”
(P15)
New empty nesters face the challenge of reorienting goals once children leave home
“Went through a stage where I didn't really have personal goals at the time as much as just wanting to get the kids taken care of and all of their goals met.”
(P15)
“So like those hours after school from like 3:00 to 9:00 for the last 15 years were filled”
(P17)
Method Goals & Details
Based on participant reporting in interviews
Discover unintended use cases of common applications
Learn what Information can be gathered from these application
Takeaways
Can discover information regarding child's:
Safety
Physical wellbeing
Spending (financial wellbeing)
Happiness/social life
Suggests that parents want to be hands-off, but still desire reassurance of child’s wellbeing
Method Goals & Details
Gather large amount of quantitative data to reinforce interview findings
Questions surrounded communication
frequency
methods (direct and indirect)
topics of importance
technology
expectations vs reality
Participant Details
Two 23 Item Qualtrics surveys
Parent (N=149)
137 female, 6 male
50% ages 55-64
Adult child (N=73)
58 female, 11 male, 3 non binary, 1 NA
50% ages 25-34 year old
Survey Findings
Frequency & Expectations
Participants want to talk to their parent/child at least once a week, in most cases more frequently
“Time difference and busy schedules make it difficult to stay in touch with my grandmother, but I wish I could talk to her more” (C21)
Communication Methods
Parents will go along with the method their child prefers (text)
Topics of Communication
Combined desired
Child’s daily activities (~60%) & child’s academic career (25%)
Parent’s additionally desired
Child’s concerns (40%) & child’s wellbeing (25%)
Checking In
Parents reported using location tracking to check in (Find My iPhone, Life360)
Children are not always comfortable with location tracking
Research Insights
1
Parents want to talk with their child about a wide variety of topics while children will share information at varying levels of detail (due to time and effort required)
2
Parents learn through direct and indirect (“checking-in”) means of communication if their child is “okay”, indicating a need for more contextual indicators of wellbeing
3
Parents wish to maintain regular communication, however may sacrifice their preferences due to respect for their adult child’s privacy and independence
Design Requirements
🛠️
Solution is customizable/flexible to allow users to emphasize or prioritize subjects of importance
📆
Solution is quick and easy to integrate into day to day life
❤️
Solution allows parents to check on and feel reassured of their child’s wellbeing without solely relying on location information
💬
Solution establishes routine in the frequency of communication
🔎
Solution allows users to vary granularity of shared information to foster independence and control
Guiding Question
How might we create a solution emphasizing quick, flexible interactions, that meets shared communication goals and facilitates independence, to inspire parental confidence in an adult child’s wellbeing?
Participant Details
5 parent & adult child pairs (10 total)
8 female, 2 male
Parents ages 50 - 60
Children ages 20- 30
Method Goals & Details
Explore minimal information sharing: the amount and type of information that agrees with both parties
“I wish... / How to...”
2 scenarios (1 for parents, 1 for children)
Generate Ideas: Many partial and full ideas
4 brainstorm prompts based on design requirements
Idea Generation
Over 21 unique sketches and 70 noted ideas were generated across the two session, revealing common themes of a shared family information hub with high-level or “roundup” information gathered through consistent reminders.
Consolidation to final Concept
Reviewed all concepts to identify key features
Discussed feasibility and limitations as informed by our research
Enhanced and combined multiple elements to create a solution that best encompassed our design requirements
Sharing daily moments with micro messaging
The graphic below is a low-fidelity visual to represent our concept. Essentially, our app idea is to have family members answer daily questions using different types of visual information that could be compiled for a quick look into everyone’s daily life.
Goals
Evaluate user understanding of application purpose and expectations of interactions
Verify if design requirements are met
Participants
2 Pilot tests
5 adult children (all female, ages 20 - 30)
5 parents (all female, ages 50 - 60)
Method Details
Semi-structured interviews
Walkthrough of wireframe flows to assess initial thoughts and feelings
Main Takeaways
Micro-interactions and contextual info greatly bridge communication gap, but parents wish for more detailed information
Users may choose to skip emotion questions, as color can be too abstract to be representative of mood
Discrepancy of user expectations when it comes to certain app interactions
Discrepancy of user expectations when it comes to certain app concepts
Goals
Evaluate uAssess user experience in a more realistic context
Evaluate user response to visual design aspects
Participants
2 parents (all male, ages 50 - 60)
3 adult children (all male, ages 25 - 30)
Method Details
Semi-structured interview walkthrough of features
Open ended questions to explore and discover interactive features
Main Takeaways
Enhance group visibility and management
Make clearer indicators for available interactions
Better visual distinction to separate concepts and differentiate between mandatory and optional elements
Goals
Assess usability of the high fidelity prototype
Gather feedback on two versions of “check-in” flow
Participants
3 MS-HCI second year students
2 Industry professionals (UX Researchers)
Method Details
Semi-structured interview walkthrough of features
Open ended questions to explore and discover interactive features
Prioritization
4
Usability catastrophe; fixing this is essential, given highest priority
3
Major usability problem; fixing this is given high priority
2
Minor usability problem; fixing this is given low priority
1
Cometic problem only; fix if time is available
Summary
9 updates made covering Priority 3’s and 4’s
Extensive check-in feature evaluation
While we did test the check-in alternatives with our expert evaluators, the feature could benefit from a more extensive evaluation (i.e., Diary study).
Widen participant demographic
Given more time, we would like to test this solution with a wider demographic, as the majority of participants were female.
Exploring other use cases
Solution may also support micro communications with adults and aging parents. A variant could allow meal sharing, medication and health reporting and more.
Trust the process
Starting off which such a broad question and no solution in mind, we were unsure if our problem area would benefit from a technological solution. However, through discussion with peers and advisors, we realized feelings of uncertainty were natural. In time, we did address all doubts through primary research, analysis, and gathering user design feedback.
Sell it!
If deployed, framing our app is important because while we know the potential benefit, users may initial be hesitant to adopt another application