Abstract:

Smartphones have become the solution to most problems of everyday life and information searching has revolutionized. This includes cooking, traveling, home decorating, job finding, shopping, understanding a term or any everyday task or specific project, the first thing people do these days is searching on mobile or downloading an app to do the specific task. The same approach also applies to parenting.

Parenting is a social science field not only about growing a child but living altogether a new life. Parenting is a learning process for parents. Parenting or child rearing is the process of promoting and supporting the physical, emotional, social, and intellectual development of a child from infancy to adulthood. Parenting refers to the aspects of raising a child aside from the biological relationship. (Brooks, 2012.).

Good parenting helps foster empathy, honesty, self-reliance, self-control, kindness, cooperation, and cheerfulness. It also promotes the development of intellectual curiosity, motivation, and desire to achieve. It helps protect children from developing anxiety, depression, eating disorders, anti-social behavior. It helps children deter from the use of drug and alcohol. (Steinberg 2005, 4.).

In his book, Garrett (2011, 3.) mentions that people have a double-edged relationship with the products and services they use. They can give the feeling of empowerment or frustration; they simplify or complicate lives.

User experience is not about the inner workings of a product or service. User Experience is about how it works on the outside, where a person encounters it. (Garrett 2011, 6.) Garrett (2011, 17) defines User-Centered Design as the practice of creating engaging, efficient user experiences.

Based on the features determined during idea creation, a mobile learning application prototype is designed and developed. With the help of prototyping platform provided by Proto.io (https://proto.io/), the initial application user interface is designed.

The usability test which aimed to assess user performance, establishing, and validating user performance is conducted at usability lab. The goal of the usability evaluation was to identify potential design concerns, the efficiency, productivity, and end-user satisfaction. (Usability.gov, 3.) The evaluation results of parenting app indicate that parents were excited about the application concept and its specific features. This has shown that parents work will become easier in an organized manner and they will get the answers for different parenting matters quickly. Also, the excitement reveals that parents will become more enthusiastic about the idea of using the app to make sure their parenting actions are giving the best possible results (as reflected from the post testing feedback).

Based on the results of this paper, it is confirmed that parenting app is the need of the hour in Finland. The initial user study has reflected a lack of a mobile app that would ease parents’ work during this mysterious experience of parenthood. It is apparent from the initial study that information on parenting is plenty but still the parents don’t get satisfied solution to the specific problems. Every parent is distinct and every child has an individuality. Thus, the information available need to be categorized and personalized.

Keywords:

Mobile Learning Application, User Centered Design, Parenting.