#Adulting: UX Research on Developing Effective Adults

Overview

For an intensive UX research course, students were asked to select a human-centered design question, research it, and create a design to resolve it. My 11-week study revolved around how we might help emerging adults successfully transition into adulthood. The work included:

• Developing and refining a design research question

• Scheduling, sprints, presentations at fixed intervals, and time management

• UX research, developing and refining prototypes, and testing prototypes

• Developing final, hi-fi mockups of the design solution

The Problem Space

The rise of social media has ensured a constant supply of studies and commentaries about the unpreparedness and inabilities of upcoming generations compared to those who came before. This is perhaps most obvious in the rise of #adulting across social spaces. The perceived unpreparedness begs the question: Is that really true? Is the next generally actually less-capable than the previous ones? If so, what’s causing that? And further, what can we do about it?

In the end, the research question is really about asking how we might transition emerging adults into adulthood in the most effective manner possible.

Researching the Meaning of Adulthood

Research began with an extensive review of current academic work into emerging adulthood and childhood development, including the current definitions of adulthood and suggestions for creating the best adults. I also interviewed established adults, those recently transitioned into “effective adulthood,” and experts in the field, including an adulthood transitions professional and one of the leading researchers in the emerging adulthood field.

As it turns out, people have struggled with raising effective adults for a long time and the factors for creating an effective adult are vast and complex, ranging from parenting style to socioeconomics and culture. Learning this, I had to limit my scope to just the inflection point between emerging adulthood and actual adulthood - roughly the development between high school and college.

Research Methods

Research Synthesis & Findings

Raw data goes through the process of abstraction - developing themes from individual data points to locate trends. From there, themes are dissected to find deeper insights on their true meaning. These insights are then used to develop design principles - elements based in data and required in whatever the final design may be.

Raw Interview Data Categorized into Themes

This affinity diagram shows the grouping of standard interviewee comments into themes. Each unique color represents a unique interviewee comment. Note: Expert themes are not shown and were done separately.

Discovered Themes

• Adult-like responsibilities and social interactions during childhood significantly contribute to future success

• Too much or too little mentorship negatively affects childhood development

• People have unique knowledge sets and knowledge gaps based on their upbringing

• Currently learns through Internet, but wants more guidance, feedback, support, and engagement

• Hands-on learning is the most effective instructional method for learning skills

• Interest in working with others to help get where they want to be in life

• Emerging adults and adults have anxiety about self-sufficiency

Themes to Insights

Deeper insights were discovered through grouping expert interviewee themes (left) and standard interviewee themes (right) based on their commonalities. By treating these two interview groups separately, I could discover confirming or conflicting evidence in the experts’ research, as well as hopefully validate my own research and ensure the highest applicability.

Discovered Insights

• Structure, responsibility, and commitment help drive adult skills

• Learning should be driven by what users know and don’t know

• Learning is best done in-person, hands-on, and in a group

• Anxiety both drives and exacerbates difficulties in becoming an effective adult

• Academic success does not equate to personal or professional success

Insights to Design Principles

Insights further define and help link to specific principles that must be applied to any solution that would fulfill the design research question. Using these principles, we can create ideas for fulfilling all users’ needs discovered during research and ensure a direct line from the research through to the design solution.

FINDINGS (DESIGN PRINCIPLES)

• Driven by student experience

• Focus on employment training, practical life skills, and social/emotional development

• Standard frequency and structure requiring user commitment

• Adult-level tone and expectations

• Community-based / community-building

• Hands-on

• In-person

Ideation

Based on the design principles, we develop create ideas (ideating) for potential solutions. The ideas range from community social media groups and self-paced eLearning courses to VR job training courses and even a national, government-mandated civilian corps.

To help pinpoint the most appropriate solutions, I graphed all the potential design solutions across two spectra:

• Easily accepted by a general audience or society vs radical in nature

• Logistically/technically simple to implement vs complex to implement

The winning solution (towards the middle, in green) represents the selected solution.

Solution

The final design solution chosen is the creation of a full-time adulthood transition program, visualized in the form of a user journey through the program. The program would take place between the high school and college and is intended to fill in as many knowledge gaps as possible prior to a student entering adulthood. Through research, it was determined that this program should be focused on three major education/training areas:

• On-site employment training at local businesses

• Live-fire social/emotional training

• Hands-on practical skills training

Design & Testing

A prototype high-level view of the transition program was created for user testing. Prototype designs were shown to and analyzed by both expert and standard users, who developed feedback to adjust the program. There are six phases of the program, with the first three serving as analysis and construction of the curriculum, followed by instruction, and completed with a post assessment to determine if students are ready to advance to a career or college, or if they must loop back into the program to take it again. See below for additional detail.

Feedback on Prototype

I brought this design back to my expert interviewees who critiqued and helped refine the design in the following ways:

• Reduce program length from (initially) a 1-2 year program to an 8-week, Summer program

• Change the post-assessment to a reflection and strategy session (no looping back into the instruction upon failing)

• Modify program goal to “develop self-awareness skills" and tools to problem solve” rather than “create the perfect adult”

• Prioritize instruction around social/emotional skills and hands-on employment training rather than giving equal weight to all or prioritizing practical skill training

Final Design

The final design is a transition program described as follows:

Final Program Design

The final design solution is a visualized set of user journey maps with increasing levels of detail. They include:

1. Traditional vs Transitional Development Pathway - Where a program would fit into an emerging adult’s life

2. Transitional Program Overview - The overall course or program an emerging adult would go through

3. Transitional Program Class Structure - A daily course design for developing specific skills and assessing growth

The program is based on the concepts of structured vs unstructured life as developed from the research. This refers to childhood with a pathway dictated by authority figures and adulthood with a pathway self-determined by the supposedly functioning adult. This program would take place during the most critical inflection point of an emerging adult’s life - this transition from structured to unstructured life sometime between finishing high school and starting college or a career. This program would short-circuit the fail points experienced by emerging adults entering unstructured life by providing a transition into that lifestyle as opposed dropping them in the deep end.

Final Transition Program

The transition program includes the following development and structural aspects:

1. Pre-assessment - Inventory and evaluate what the student, their parents, and the school is saying about the student’s skills.

2. Analysis & Curriculum Build - Use inventory and analysis to develop a curriculum to fill the most students’ needs and gaps.

3. Build Student Community - Facilitate group-based learning by paring students with those of similar needs, or with those who have already learned needed skills to build peer groups and lateral (not just hierarchical) learning.

4. Instruction - Instruct students on the three major skill areas, using classroom-based instruction with in-the-field employment.

5. Post-assessment/Self-reflection - Upon nearing program completion, students will work with parents, peers, and teachers to assess progress, determine weak areas still present, and develop resources for future assistance and self-reliance.

6. Transition to College or Career - Students then decide the most appropriate adulthood pathway, having gained the skills and experience to identify personal needs and problem solve.

Final Class Design

Classes could be structured in multiple ways or to reinforce specific needs, but they generally include three major development areas:

• Social/emotional training - Setting expectations, developing tools and problem-solving tactics, and getting emerging adults mentally prepared for their daily work

• Hands-on skills - Practical skill application and instruction, teaching the literal mechanics of unstructured life, from as basic as doing laundry to navigating complex social systems.

• On-site employment training - Working at a real job for real pay at a partnered company to develop social, problem-solving, and real-world workforce skills.

Reflections, Conceptual Holes & Future Work

Due time and other constraints, this project could only be so in-depth, and thus, there are conceptual holes and complexities that require additional reflection or research.

1. Understanding the Diversity of Childhood Experiences

   There are significant factors that factor into how children develop, including the culture of a society, familial values, economics, and historical contexts. These are deep and complicated factors that could use more analysis in the context of how they affect emerging adulthood and the efficacy of an adult.

2. Feasibility, Logistics, and Metrics of a Transition Program

   Logistical questions include understanding how such a program would be funded or affiliated, how instructors would be chosen and validated, and how a pre-assessment would be abstracted into a course curriculum, among others. It would also be extremely important to understand the metrics of a successful program, both in terms of instruction and student learning, especially if the course is not “for a grade.”

3. Appropriate Design Framework or “Lens”

   Applying a framework like value sensitive design (VSD) to this research may be appropriate as one of the significant contributing factors to the underlying issues of emerging adulthood is the American value of college education as a symbol of and formula for adulthood success. Understanding such values, morals, and ethics is likely important to this project.