How to design children's progress to parents in China

Schools and private training centers increasingly seek digital modes of communication to communicate student progress through mobile devices. Digitalizing student progress can facilitate communication with parents and achieve better education outcomes in the long term.

Under the influence of the Chinese education system and traditional parenting culture, Chinese parents have unique demands on how they would like to view their children's progress. In this case study, we will discuss 5 design principles to guide student progress report design.

Research & Design Methodology

Design Principle 1. Be adaptable to children's development stage

"I sit next to him every time he takes an online class. I want to know if he is listening and if he behaves in class. It's an opportunity for him to form a good habit." - Sha, 37, Shanghai

We observed that parents of children of various development stage have different expectations. There are three major mind-shifting moments for Chinese parents - when entering pre-school, (age 3-4), entering primary school- Key Stage 2 (age 6-7) and entering Grade 3- Key Stage 3 (age 9-10).

During pre-school years, parents care about soft skills in terms of language interest, class habits and personality development. They pay attention to class performance such as raising hands and frequency of interaction with teachers. When entering primary school, parents start to be serious about how much their children learn. When entering Grade 3 - Key Stage 3 (age 9-10), parents think it is time to prepare their children for their middle school entrance exams. They start to demand after-class learning to help improve test scores.

Design Principle 2. Explain grades and provide actionable suggestions to parents

"It would be better if I knew which exact words he did not do well in the speaking exercises." -Li, 33, Shanghai

Parents want to understand the grading standards, correct answers, and even have personalized and critical suggestions. When showing students’ homework grades and test results, schools need to help parents understand students’ strength and weakness and give them step-by-step instructions that parents can follow at home to improve the weakness.

Most Chinese parents check homework and constantly talk to teachers to seek support. A well-designed homework and test report should help parents assist their children’s studies at home.

Design Principle 3. Share learning moments instead of scores

"I just shared a video of him in class yesterday. Grandma always wants to know his improvement." - Chen, 32, Shanghai

Although sharing on social media is prevalent, most parents are not interested in sharing test scores. Chinese consider test scores as personalized and want to be modest. When designing a sharing functionality, schools need to avoid presenting scores, in order to prevent unhealthy score competition. The focus should be to concentrate on the successful achievements of students and to encourage parent to celebrate those milestone moments i.e. graudation, good test socres, etc.

Design Principle 4. Design for both parents and children

"He does it on his own. I get home and see him sharing it in my Moments." - Chen, 32, Shanghai

During the user testing, we presented participants with 3 design options for sharing content on social media. We suspected that the parents would prefer visual styles for adults, since the content would appear in their social media. However, to our surprise, the parents preferred visual styles for kids. One reason is that parents like to involve their children in social sharing interactions. Often they ask children if they want to share on social media. Second, there is a loose boundary of who is allowed to use the app/program. Children are mostly allowed to use apps made for adults. Furthermore, today, a 5-year-old child knows how to share on social media and can complete the task without help. It is important that the content should be interesting for children, desipite the fact that the main users are parents.

Design Principle 5. Provide a drill down experience

"If I see the score A+, I wont' check every single task. He is probably on track." - Li, 33, Shanghai

Not all parents are highly hands-on in their children’ studies. Their requests for progress reports are different. Schools should provide a drill down experience based on parent's involvement. With children's growth, parent's involvement will gradually change from being a 'Monitor' - looking at everything, to being a 'helper' - allowing children to be independent. When children's learning ability surpasses parent's own knowledge level, which usually happens during Key Stage 3, it is not particularly valuable for parents to know exact learning task anymore. Instead, the value of progress report is to inform if their children are on track.

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