In order to analyze thoroughly, I explored the companies under the lens of different categories: description (how the company identifies itself), conversion (selling of the product), library/navigation/UI (how it houses its products), and aesthetic/brand. Cosmic Kids Yoga was highly successful with the description of their products using both kid friendly and adult targeted lingo in different areas of their site. Their inviting adjectives, like magical and adventurous, grabbed viewers and aided in conversion. Tappity, conversely, employed user review snippets to describe the service. By letting the user’s voice be louder than the company’s, the message rang loud and clear. When it came to conversion, a major strategy used by multiple companies was the free trial. It seemed that letting users get a sample of the service at no cost was highly effective since it was so popular. Peloton, Cosmic Kids Yoga for examples, offered 30 day free trials, while others offered free weeks or, like, Outschool, had a sample class posted on the website to give a preview. Outschool also was successful in creating a sense of scarcity or urgency by featuring many banners announcing things like, “ one more spot!” or “ending soon!”. Peloton was the obvious winner when examining the library and user interface. Although the exercise service for adults differs in many ways from Comet.Club, their layout was intuitive and was highly user friendly. Peloton was the main inspiration for the eventual wireframes I created. The last category I explored was aesthetic and brand, and undoubtedly the high achievers were Disney, Fortnite, and Roblox. One of the challenges of offering a service for kids is that not only does the aesthetic preferences of kids change every year or two, but you are also targeting their adult parents. Disney, Roblox and Fortnite often solved this problem by creating interfaces that featured limited copy, bold and large text, as well as colorful hero images and videos. By limiting the amount of reading required and presenting an enticing, grabbing visual, the interface was able to appeal to and be accessible to a wide variety of ages. Now that I had a clear idea of what made these successful companies so popular, I was ready to recommend action items for Comet.Club. 

Primary Research: Survey

Once the secondary research gave me a direction to head in, I wrote a survey asking parents about the habits of their kids: how they engaged with activities and entertained themselves in their free time. 53 survey takers were asked to share their basic demographics, what clubs their child was in, what entertainment they paid for, and how the child interacted with the internet.

When asked what extracurricular activities the child was signed up for, the answers varied widely reflecting a broad array of interests. Although over 20 options were selected, the most popular was dance with 20.8%, followed by art with 17% of responses. This data confirms that Comet.Club was right in hiring dance and art teachers for their program, and should continue offering such services. Band and soccer were the next most popular choices. Although not as significant, it may be worth pursuing to offer related classes in the future, once the company’s launch stabilizes.

The next question asked, besides the aforementioned extracurricular, for what memberships or subscriptions is the child signed up (they checked all that applied).  The most popular with over half of responses (56.6%) was Disney+ streaming service. A library card came in second with 45.3%, and Youtube was a close third with 41.5% of responses. It seems that there is space for Comet.Club to enter the discussion since none of the listed subscriptions offer what Comet.Club does and many of the responses are free and would not take away from the entertainment budget of the parents. 

The survey also asked a short answer question: when are you most  proud of your child? Each answer varied of course, but over half of the responses included kindness, sharing, or what is often referred to as a soft skill. It may be worthwhile for Comet.Club to include soft skill training within the curriculum of another topic to appeal to parents. For example, in an art class the students could be trained in soft skills through a critique of the art of their classmates.

Mood Board

Using all of the gathered data, as well as requirements from the co-founders, I brainstormed and imagined what Comet.Club should look like. Taking from the aesthetic of Fortnite and Disney, I wanted the style to be bold, energetic, and youthful. The process began with me making a sample board of numerous fonts, hues, photos and illustrations, and sending it to the co-founders for their opinions. They selected favorites and we whittled the board down and added more to suit their desires. We ended up with a board that reflected action-packed fun and futuristic space travel. 

Next, I designed a user journey map. A common pattern that users complete is called a user journey, while the most popular journeys are called red routes. This user flow map demonstrates the informational architecture of those patterns. The two red routes I predicted for Comet.Club were to 1) select a class to take and 2) to review classes previously taken. The map below demonstrates the journey a user would take to accomplish both of those tasks.