Digital solution for tracking and organizing special-needs kids
on school transports.
This is a personal project I have decided to create because of the importance of being in control on those kids with maximum attention and minimum efforts.
Product Designer, Marketer
Product Strategy, User Research, Interaction,
Wifreames and Visual Design, Information Architecture
I met a teacher that works in special-needs school and while we were talking,
I heard her frustration of the old organizing system of the transport school for those kids.
She even told me that one day, one kid got lost.
While new technologies had been successfully adopted at educational institutions through digitization and the use of computers, there are some areas that remained unchanged for many years.
One of the reasons for that probably, is because there are ones that are mostly relevant for special needs children.
I realised there were issues with logistics which aren’t directly part of the education process, particularly with the transport of children from home to school and vice versa. As explained by my mother, the process is complicated and involves many people that must be consistently synchronized as the children themselves may not be left unsupervised. My goal is to develop an application that will help make things easier for everyone and save time, effort and nerves.
This service is intended to become a solution in the aspects of organization, comfort and calmness for those whom respond for this special-need kids.
The main 3 personas that are my most important clients are:
Occupation: Secretary
Location: Pardes Hanna
Gender: Female
Age: 38
Martial Status: Married
In Short:
It’s very important for Yasmin to wake up early, to do some Yoga exercise, to take a shower and to wake up her son Shlomi, one hour before the school. They eat together breakfast and she always bring him on time to the school-transport and then she rush to work.
Motivations
* Her son, Shlomi.
* Determined.
* Independent.
Frustrations & Pain points
* She on rush to work after leaving her son, and has no time to check if her son came to school safely.
* She works during the time her son comes from school.
* She is pretty much a worried person.
Potential Solutions
* Keeping in touch with the teacher about her son.
* To work in another position that is more flexible.
* App that will let her to know what is going exactly with the son.
Occupation: Engineer in a startup company
Location: Emek Hefer
Gender: Male
Age: 42
Martial Status: Married
In Short:
After his coffee, he go to volunteer as a bus transport accompanier at a special needs school. And then he go to his work.
Motivations
* Volunteer spirit.
* Organized.
* Tech-specialist.
Frustrations & Pain points
* Many kids with different disabilities on the bus, can cause confusion.
* Big responsibility.
* Lack of organization and old system.
Potential Solutions
* Direct communication with the responsible person.
* SOS emergency system.
* App that will let him easily mark and inform which child came to the transport and arrived safely.
Occupation: Special Educational Needs teacher
Location: Caesarea
Gender: Female
Age: 49
Martial Status: Married
In Short:
Wakes up with lots of effort and she must drink coffee before she speaks. She do it rapidly and rush to class.
After workday at class she is exhausted and her only will is to get home.
Motivations
* Warm person.
* Confident.
* Assertive.
Frustrations & Pain points
* Lack of technology knowledge.
* Disorientation in the field of technology.
* Used to the old system.
Potential Solutions
* Private life separated from work.
* Peace of mind regarding the arrival of the students.
* App that will let her easily to know which kid should be in class and let the parent know that their kids came safely.
Special needs kids traveling to and from their educational institutions experience a long and confusing process of having to be accompanied throughout their travel, but this confusion also happens between their accompanying adults which leads to many problems. This creates complex logistical and critical safety issues. These children may come from locations distant from their institution and are transported by taxis or municipal vehicles e.g buses and must be with adult supervision at all times: parents to travel-supervisors to teachers and vice versa.
Every miscommunication between these supervisors can be a potential danger to children’s health because of their disabilities.
The improvement of the the technology in many platforms, gives us new options and opportunities,
and more abilities to make our life and others more easy. I suggest a solution for a very important subject,
where mistakes can be very critical and can cause big panic.
In future, it will be able to assist with planning travel’s transports, organize people on transports.
For any schools, organizations or companies.
Defining the MVP
Goal definition: Let the users easily, to be in control and updated about the children during the travel to school and vice verse.
List of recommendations: Live and general informative data about the children like times, places and statistics; Approving system; Inside mail system will remain the tranquility in the private life and in other messages apps that are already overloaded.
Four roles:
Manager Notify about important information, Stats and critical alerts.
Teacher Bus overview information. Class overview information. Messages.
Accompanier\ Assistant Approving that every thing went fine with the kids.
Parent Live view about what is going with their special-needs child and statistics.
Tracking of development: Let the users try the prototype and test how they operate it.
Demo for the application, made in Adobe XD
Great opportunity to think and solve important issue, creating 4 platforms (roles) app that works together and helps the users to communicate and to be an organized system that works without any mistakes and misunderstandings.
