Turning Bystanders Into Upstanders With StandUp
Team
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Josselyn Hui, UX Designer
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Duration
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12 Day Sprint
My Roles
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User Interviews
Research Synthesis
Personas
Storyboard
Wireframing
High-Fidelity Mockups
Prototyping
Overview
The Challenge
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Design an app that will revolutionize the approach schools take towards bullying prevention while identifying and incorporating an appropriate sponsor to help us launch.
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Solution Overview
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We designed an enjoyable experience for kids in middle school to develop their understanding and ability to stand up to bullying. Our solution involves sections dedicated to immediate intervention and long-term personal development for kids to stand up to bullying, and an anonymous incident report to address severe cases of bullying.
Research
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Understanding Anti-Bullying in America
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Our initial research showed that bullying is still highly prevalent among our youth today:
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28% of U.S. students in grades 6–12 experienced bullying.
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70.6% of young people say they have seen bullying in their schools.
These statistics are actually improvements from recent years. This begged the question: what programs are schools using, what is limiting them, and why aren’t they making a bigger impact?
I interviewed people at multiple levels of the education system as well as students to better understand their limitations.
Interviewing Administrators & Teachers
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We interviewed two administrators and one teacher, all from different schools. Our goals were to:
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Understand what efforts to support anti-bullying have been made.
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Which methods for supporting victims and preventing bullying have been effective and why?
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What limitations have administrators experienced in ensuring long term effectiveness?
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We learned that a big pain point for all our interviewees was funding: schools always need more money. However, even when there were designated funds for addressing bullying, the bigger pain point was time: training staff, addressing instances, and supporting victims all take time that teachers and staff don't always have.
Q: In your experience, what methods have proven to be most effective?
A: Group (student) mediation is highly effective, but we need to train more staff members to make a big difference.”
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-Assistant Principal
Interviewing Students
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We also spoke with three students to understand both sides: what teachers and staff thought was working, versus what students were actually experiencing.
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Overall, our interviewees expressed an awareness of bullying, but the common pain point was uncertainty: how and when to best handle situations as a student, whether they were the target or not.
Q: What are some ways that students are able to report bullying?
A: Talk to a teacher, but to be honest, not all your teachers would help you.
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-Highschool Student
In a nutshell, we discovered...
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Tailored programs eventually lose validity: bullying is constantly changing
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Lack of trained staff prevents widespread implementation of effective methods
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Overwhelmed staff due to daily workload plus bullying cases
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Uncertainty of how to effectively handle bullying in the moment or whom to talk to that can help
Pivoting From Supportive to Preventative
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Our interviews showed us that our initial assumptions were wrong: we had assumed that we could help address bullying through supporting victims, but we saw a bigger opportunity in prevention.
Students need leaders. More specifically, bystanders at school that are willing to stand up for their peers when they are being bullied.
If 7 out of 10 students witness bullying at some point, that means potentially 7 out of 10 students can stand up to it.
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By developing the social skills and confidence of these bystanders to safely identify, intervene, and/or report cases of bullying, we can motivate them to be upstanders on the front lines of prevention, allowing for teachers and staff to focus on the bird’s eye view of bullying in their school.
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Narrowing Our Target Audience to Middle School Students
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Bullying happens in every grade. We targeted grades where kids begin developing more independence but may lack maturity and confidence to stand up to bullying. Our research showed that this is a pivotal moment in introducing behavior that kids will utilize now and develop as they grow older.
Solution
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What Are Others Doing?
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Of the four we analyzed, their main focus is anonymous incident reporting.
Incident report
User can view state laws on bullying
Incident Report
Glossary on specific bullying cases
Emergency contact
Incident Report
Anonymous chat
Live messenger
Incident report
Change location
Designing For Kids & Adults
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With our feature prioritization set, we were off to the drawing board. Designing for kids was a challenge, we needed to offer enough content to be helpful but not too much; we had to keep it clear and engaging.
Immediate Intervention
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Recognizing that in many cases new users might not remember what they’ve learned in the app when a situation arises for them to intervene, we wanted to provide a quick resource to talk them through with a smart and safe approach.
Clear instructions to safely intervene in the moment
Gamification of learning to keep users motivated and engaged
Social Development
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An interactive learning section allows kids to apply what they’ve learned in a fun and engaging manner. This is a key differentiator between what competitors provide and what we do.
Incident Report
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Students can submit an incident report to their guidance counselor with options to provide details like; location, time, people involved, custom details, and pictures.
Step by step form to easily submit
Users can check the status of their report and messages from guidance counselor
Saved & Submitted Reports
Students can view saved reports here as well as see an update of the status of their incident report after it's been received by their counselor.
Next Steps
Design for those receiving the reports
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Ensure the design of incoming reports is comprehensible and can be easily addressed
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Test proposed designs with school administrators
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Reflections
Viewing my design through a different lens
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​Understanding how our primary users (kids ages 10-13 years old) would utilize this app gave me a refined appreciation empathizing
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On the other hand, keeping in mind our secondary users who in this case, were just as important to achieving our goals as the primary users gave me a new perspective when and how I research target users
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