moSha
Social network use among mothers is increasing year after year, as more and more mothers seek both social support and motherhood-related information online. For Basic Interaction Design, we developed moSha, a mobile application that leverages the power of users’ existing social networks to connect busy, on-the-go moms in meaningful ways.
Contributions
Persona Development
Scenario Development
Wireframes
UI Design
Flash Demo
Collaborators
Lauryn Fantano, BFA in ID
Albert Yih, BFA in CD
Timeline
3 weeksBrief
For the first project in Basic Interaction Design, we were asked to explore the issues and design challenges around mobile information systems. Given a set of six users and tasks, we chose, “Suburban stay-at-home moms retrieving status information from across their online social networking services.” The emphasis of this project was to create a compelling persona to drive the design of a set of key interfaces.
Process
Wwe were asked to focus much of our attention on developing a compelling persona. We found the process challenging, as it’s hard to strike a between balance boring and unique facts, and banal and extreme stories. Most of all, we were encouraged to consider how our persona would appeal to potential developers on our team.
After a few major iterations, we landed on Lynda Bradley, a 34 year old mother of four, who recently relocated due to her husband’s job. Leaving her friends and family behind has been tough, and she’s had trouble connecting with other moms in her new city, as well as keeping in touch with mothers back in her hometown.
Fleshing out Lynda’s life helped us develop realistic and compelling scenarios which then drove our wireframing process.
With the social network market so saturated with niche products, we needed to find a way to differentiate our service from the rest. We researched the various options available to mothers, as well as the types of mobile applications mothers are using. What we discovered is that while social networks for moms do exist, and are used, they do not leverage the power and depth of mother’s existing social networks. As more and more moms join Facebook, there’s less of an incentive to sign up for a new, separate service.
We decided to design a product that would pull in moms’ existing connections from Facebook and Twitter, allowing them to share and receive emotional support and relevant information in a mobile format. moSha is essentially a way for mother’s to filter their contacts, ensuring they’re receiving and sending information to like-minded people.
Solution
moSha is a mobile application that connects mothers in meaningful ways. It leverages moms’ existing social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, creating a mobile networking environment tailored for busy moms. Mothers can ask questions, share memories, or send out SOS signals when feeling frustrated or upset. moSha provides busy mothers with both information and social support that might get lost in larger, more general social networking applications.
