Problem Statement:

Imagine that we are a company that runs On Premise Meditation classes for Adults. Design an app for for the company to help kids practice meditation.

Clarifying questions & stating assumptions:

1. The company wants kids to practice meditation remotely or on premise?
2. I am assuming kids are of the age 3-12years.

Users of the Product:

1. Kids – This segment can be further broken down into the following:

• Kids above 6 years of age who are self reliant & do not need any assistance with using the app. They might also own a device or use their parent’s device independently
• Kids below 6 years of age who need assistance in using the app, deciding for themselves and cannot be left unmonitored

2. Parents – App can be used by parents who are looking for meditation solution for their kids

3. Teachers – With institutional customers, a potential set of users are teachers who will be using the app for classroom meditation sessions.

Will focus on user groups 1. & 2. for this question.
Pain points of user groups 1 & 2:

First 4 pain points are higher in priority as they affect the entire target user group uniformly.

Solutions as features of the app:

High Priority features will be a part of MVP and low priority features will be re-evaluated & included in next verison.

Key Metrices to monitor:

1. Onboarding: Number of unique singups, Number of profiles created

2. Engagement: Daily active users, daily active profiles, time in app per profile, session lengths per profile, session frequency per profile

3. Revenue: Number of PQLs,  premium sign ups, ad revenue

A framework for answering this Google product design question.

1. Clarify that this is for teaching children to be able to do a style of relaxing meditation where thoughts quiet down?
   Interviewer Answer:YES.
2. What ages?  Boys & Girls?  iOS?  Android? Could it be a Webapp? Do we have a subject matter expert?
   1. A:Ages 12-16, boys & girls, webapp is fine. We have a subjet matter expert in meditation.
3. What are the user needs?
   1. What will success look like to them?
      INTERVIEWER ANSWER:
      Experiencing an meditative state where their mind is quiet and there are not persistent thoughts in their head. Ideally, there are no thoughts in their head.
   2. What are the challenges?
      Interviewer Answers:
      1. MEDITATION IS A SKILL THAT MUST BE PRACTICED.  IT’S SURPRISINGLY HARD TO QUIET YOUR MIND. IT’LL FEEL LIKE FAILURE FOR A LONG TIME.
      2. IT’S HARD TO SEE PROGRESS
      3. IT’S HARD TO UNDERSTAND AND VISUALIZE THE GOAL. MOST PEOPLE HAVE NEVER EXPERIENCED A MEDITATIVE STATE. AND WHEN THEY DO IT’S NOT OBVIOUS THEY ARE IN ONE. IF THEY DO NOTICE, IT OFTEN ENDS THE MEDITATIVE STATE
   3. Do we need their parents permission (and buy-in)? YES
   4. What are the goals?
      Interviewer Answer:
      1. Our meditation expert says that in their research if the user practices 10minutes/day for 30 days 90% of them get to the point where they can reach a meditative state within 10 minutes.  If they practice 60 days, 90% are able to reach a meditative state in 5 minutes. It’s Ok if they miss a single day (but not 2 in a row) up to 3 times.
      2. Our Primary Goal is to get them to practice for 10 minutes per day for 30 days. Secondary goal is to practic efor 60 days.
   5.  User Needs are to stay motivated enough to stick with this and if they miss one day, make sure they start back immediately.
      These are in order of importance (#1 is most important)
      1. Remember to start  each day.
      2. If they miss a day, start back the next day.
      3. Stick with it for 10 minutes
      4. May not see any progress for weeks.
      5. May not appreciate the benefits of the results
      6. May not have a quiet place where they can listen to audio in private.
      7. Might be embarrased if anyone knows they are doing it.
      8. May feel bad that they are not able to succeed. (“Do nothing” sounds easy, but it’s very hard.)
      9. Parents might not see benefit.
      10. They might need a different schedule for weekends.
   6. Prioritize
      1. 1-5 are the most important. This is essentially habit formation, which is very hard to do.
      2. We’ll address 6-9 as well but not address #10 yet as this would be much more complicated.
   7. Solutions
      These would all follow roughly the pattern in 8 (Chosen solution) but would vary in the content we are delivering.
      1. All text based and delivered via SMS
      2. Audio only
         1.    web-app but with only audio. Benefits: cheaper to produce the training material.
      3. Video version
         1. – this is the version I would choose. It’s only a little bit harder and much more engaging.  The part that’s harder is probably the 3rd party “endorsements” of meditation. Might be easier to get those via audio.  So another option would be a mixed Audio/Video version where we deliver as much as we can via video but if necessary do parts as audio only.
      4. One of the above 3 AND  motivational messages from:
         1. Our internal team (meditation expert, etc.)
         2. Kids their age
         3. Celebrities kids that age respect who mediate.
   8. Chosen solution:
      All video, with motivational messges from kids their age.
      1.   Have a video from kids their age about how hard they had to work to learn to mediate and about the benefits they got. (“Yeah, it took me x days and it seemed like I wasn’t getting better, then suddenly I could do it. It was very relaxing. Now I use it when I’m upset or angry to calm down. I love it”.
         (This will address (in #5 above) : 4,5,7,8
         1. If possible have unique videos to mark milestones for “you’re halfway  there” (for the 15 day mark) and “you’re almost there” (for the 25th day).
      2. Training video for th 10 minute meditation (created by our meditation expert). Might be a series of videos the progress to higher levels. Defer to mediation expert for that.  Might make the training video with one of the above from #1 ( a kid the age of users)
      3. Have graphic “progress bar” which grows exponentially  for the 10 minute daily practice and the 30 and 60 day intervals.  We want them to be able to see that each day build on all the others. (Addresses #5.3).
         1. Also have a daily congratulations video.
      4. Let them set two reminder times each day where we’ll Text them the link to the app.   Suggest they find something else they do every day (like brush their teeth) if they’d have 10 minutes to do the meditation then.  Addresses #5.1
         1. If they don’t finish the meditation before the 2nd reminder time, then remind them that second time.
         2. Note: Might need 3 or 4 reminder times.
      5. If they miss a day, text them to let them know, and have a unique video (from  kid their age) saying something encouraging about how it’s Ok to miss one day as long as they strt up immediately. Addresses #5.2
      6. If possible, make it run in most mobile browsers (addresses 5.6, 5.7)
      7. Provide research on the benefits to parents of their children learning to meditate. (This helps with 5.9 and also overall motivation)
   9. We can test this solution via an MVP with no coding
      We just need:
      1. Youtube video that guide them through meditation.
      2. Google Voice (or similar) to send/receive texts to them.
      3. Schedule text to them every day at the time they indicated.
      4. Have unique tracking url for the video (maybe with a bookmark #UserID at end  : MeditationZen.io/MeditationVideo/#UserID
      5. Have someone manually watch for that each day and confirm they loaded the video. Could have a FINISHED button at the end of the video that they click so we know they watched all 10 minutes.
   10. Successs Measures
       1. Priority : Percentage of kids who do 30 days (with 3 or fewer missed days and no consecutive days missed)
          1. Note: I’d probably let them restart if needed and call it success if they eventually reached 30 days of practice within, say, 6 months)
       2.  Seconday: percentage of kids who achieved #1 and also reported they were able to reach a meditative state within 10 minutes (which our meditation expert predicted)
       3. Secondary:  Percentage of kids who continued on to try for the 60 days.

SUMMARY

Mediation is surprisingly hard to learn. And the benefits are unclear.  You have to stick with it long enough seemingly making no progress. The benefits are enomous compounded over time as you get better.  So it’s largely a challenge of forming a new habit.  It’s kinda like brushing your teeth except you can at least smell your breath, even if the pain of cavities is in the distant future.

So I would tackle the challenges of motivation and habit formation by helping them visualize the outcome and it’s benefits and keeping them foused on doing it a day at a time.