Boundary Bridge
Designing for multi-generational spaces
ROLE
Project Manager
UX/UI Designer
with 4 team members
SKILLS
Project Management
Product Design
Research
DURATION
3 months
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we help U.S.-based young adult children establish and maintain mutually agreed upon boundaries for communication with their transnational parents who have concerns about their safety?
SOLUTION
A 2-player, gamified communication tool where players practice healthy boundary setting by tackling scenarios focused on safety concerns through a combination of asynchronous communication and facilitated conversations.
THE PROBLEM SPACE
Desk research indicates that the transition into nascent young adulthood is difficult for both parents and their children due to the renegotiation of boundaries. For parents living further away from their children, boundaries are a common point of tension due to concerns for their safety.
I have four lovely children, all now adults and left home. I rarely worry about my sons, but I constantly, constantly fret about my daughters, who both live in shared houses in distant cities.
They are okay about keeping in touch, and sympathetic to my anxiety, but it is reaching unmanageable proportions. For example, if I look at WhatsApp, I might see that one daughter was on it, say, 30 minutes ago, but the other hasn’t been on it all day. I will then look to see when they were last active on Facebook. If she hasn’t been active on Facebook either, I will telephone her... [Source]
My mom is like this. It is very overwhelming to have my mom feel like this, although I know it comes from love...It was incessant, invasive, and usually caused a fight. [Source]
she is constantly asking me so many questions at this point I give minimal information which I think upsets her but otherwise it feels like I'm reassuring her. [Source]
Still, research suggests that helpful parent roles fall into 3 categories during the transition to adulthood, including being a coach, cheerleader, and safety monitor.
GENERATIVE RESEARCH
Through semi-structured interviews with 8 young adults and parents about their current communication patterns, we found issues regarding location safety and privacy to be a focal point in communication disruption in transnational families.
1.
Transnational parents often have concerns about their young adult children’s physical and location safety.
2.
When parents and young adult children communicate about safety, the children often feel like their boundaries are not respected, leading to conflicts.
3.
Young adult children tend to compromise their boundaries in favor of easing their parents’ concerns by sharing more details about their physical and location safety.
IDEATION
Starting with 150 ideas, both the obvious, the good, the bad, and the seemingly infeasible, we whittled down to 3 main ideas.
Due to the tension that comes with redefining boundaries in a filial relationship, our solutions focused on making the communication process smoother and perhaps even add fun to all the seriousness. As a result, alongside ideation, design principles began to emerge. Guided by these principles, we selected 1 concept to pursue.
Designed for asynchronous play
Facilitates but does not replace regular communication
Promotes empathy and builds trust
Planned obsolescence: designed to retire as an interior decor piece after sufficient practice
Encourages preemptive conflict resolution, reducing the likelihood of reactive responses
HOW IT WORKS
The purpose of Boundary Crossing is to provide a visual aid in a gamified format so that children and parents have incentive to engage in difficult conversations and build trust around boundaries within a serene environment.
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