Disney

User Experience

Developing apps that work for young children (think entertainment) and their parents (now think education)

We’ve tackled user experience – thinking in terms of the specifics of digital navigation and the broader notion of the online and offline interface between brands and their audiences – for many different clients. We’ve chosen to feature this case study, though, because of the specific challenges of researching young children and their parents.

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Against an increasingly competitive backdrop of children’s apps, Crowd DNA was called upon to conduct research across three stages.

1. Assessing the current offering in the context of the competitive set.

2. Exploring appeal and comprehension of the prototype and its features.

3. Gaining a longer read on the strengths/weaknesses of the app, through more longitudinal evaluation.

Our work included parent and child depth + surf sessions, video blog reports by the parents and competitor analysis – all the way through, with particular focus on methods that took account of the cognitive stages of child development. Our work presented clear and actionable recommendations – both for further development of the app and for broader assessment of its role in Disney’s pre-teen ecosystem.

A brief clip of the UX work (no volume).

  • Narrated Galleries

    We love films, but narrated galleries – fusing showreels of still images and audio of participant commentary – creates outputs that allow for high levels of reflection and audience empathy. Ideal for user experience work, in other words

  • Crowd Communities

    We’ve a wealth of experience at setting up and managing communities for clients, with learnings on how best to engage audiences and a full box of tricks for maximising what we get out of the work – including geo tagging, streaming in social media data and a mobile optimised platform

  • Pinterest

    We’ve used Pinterest to really good effect on a number of projects recently, helping us to explore differences and commonalities among different typologies in areas such as fashion and style, home, holidays and entertainment. Engagement levels with participants always rank high, and clients love the vividness and clarity of the findings.

  • Citizen Journalism

    Citizen journalism works on the principle of making reporters of our participants, briefing them to capture what’s happening in the lives of their friends and family via video dispatches and blogging. It gets us places where we can’t otherwise get. It bypasses the bias of having a researcher in attendance. People are often more accurate reporters on those around them than on themselves, so that’s another bias circumnavigated.

  • Network Audits

    If you want to really understand how people interact with those around them, it’s logical to research interconnected groups of friends, family and work colleagues. First developed as part of our award winning word of mouth research for Guardian News & Media, and since then refined and reconfigured across a range of global projects, our network audit approach helps us understand who’s influencing who as authentically as possible.