Redesigning the Time Limits Feature in a Family Safety App
Project Overview
Product: SafePath Family Safety App
Objective: Improve the Time Limits feature to better meet the expectations of parents and the needs of their families
Project Duration: 6 weeks
Role: Lead UX Researcher
Team: Product Manager, UX/UI Designer, Data Scientist, Engineering Team
Background & Problem Statement
Our family safety app helps parents manage screen time, app usage, block inappropriate content, and monitor location for their children. The Time Limits feature has been a core part of the app, allowing parents to set daily screen time limits for individual apps, overall device use, and specific categories of apps. However, engagement analytics data and user feedback indicated that this feature was underperforming and not meeting users’ expectations.
Parents reported difficulty in understanding how much time their children had left, struggled with how to extend time limits, and were confused about how to customize limits for weekdays vs. weekends. The design was not intuitive, which led to a high level of frustration. This created an urgent need to update the feature to ensure it functioned the way users expected.
Research Goals
- Understand how users currently set and manage Time Limits.
- Identify pain points in the current Time Limits workflow.
- Gather feedback on proposed designs and identify which version meets users’ needs more effectively.
- Improve the usability and clarity of the Time Limits feature, focusing on key actions such as setting overall limits, managing categories, checking time remaining, and extending limits.
Research Methodology
To address these challenges, I conducted two rounds of user research:
- Round 1: In-Depth User Interviews with Usability Testing of Existing Flow and Proposed Flows
- Round 2: Usability Testing on Proposed Flows which were a results from Round 1
Round 1: In-Depth User Interviews
I began with 8 user interviews, focusing on understanding how parents use the Time Limits feature today and identifying where the pain points occurred. The interview included a mix of open-ended questions, as well as tasks where parents walked me through the existing Time Limits functionality.
Parent Insights on current design and behaviors:
- 7 of 8 set overall Time Limits for each day
- 3 of 8 set Time Limits for individual apps
- Children typically have less screen time on weekdays and more on weekends and in summer
- 1 user set different times for each day according to their child’s activity schedule
- 8 of 8 often have to extend their child’s screen time for just that day
- Most parents wouldn’t mind if their child spent more time on education apps like Khan Academy, but wouldn’t want them using it after bedtime
- Most felt it was too difficult to set individual categories or apps
Round 1 Testing Results on Old Flow: The Bad
- Would forget to change the segmented controller when setting a weekend Time Limit for a specific app
- Struggled finding how to add a website when the link was under the App list
- Did not understand the different between “No Time Limit” and “Unlimited”
- Some were thrown of when asked to “Edit Weekend Days” and thought they should also be able to edit Weekdays
- Did not like having a separate section just for Unlimited
Round 1 Testing Results on New Flow: The Good
- Understood the toggle would turn the Time Limits off
- Was able to set a weekday and weekend overall Time Limit
- Was easier to set Weekday and Weekend limits on the new Prototype when they were both displayed on the screen
- Was able to easier add an App and Website when the two options were separate
- Liked and was able to extend the Time Limit for just that day
- Was easier to set when “Unlimited” was in the scroll and not its own section
Round 1 Testing Results on New Flow: User Likes and Wants / This vs That
The information below represents the patterns collected during testing from the participants to understand their behaviors.
Round 1 Testing Results on New Flow: Themes
Segmented Controller
- Hard to tell which one is selected.
- Didn’t notice at first and thought they set it for the entire week.
- Forgot to switch when setting individual app time limit.
- Is clearer when weekday and weekend options are presented.
Edit Weekends
- Wanted option to edit specific days.
- Thought they needed to edit weekdays too.
- Would only want to adjust the day if had to on a holiday.
Extending Time Limits
- All parents need to do this occasionally.
- Was able to successfully do this by the drop down scroll and separate page but separate page was deemed unnecessary.
Unlimited
- No one does this today.
- Would not want child to stay up past bedtime even if on educational apps.
- Thought Unlimited meant the same as No Time Limit.
- Found Unlimited in the scroll down easily but it’s not a feature they would use.
- Thought to go to apps and websites to change to Unlimited, not its own category.
Reminders vs Auto
- Did not like the days presented to turn Time Limits back on if turned off – would need to be fully customizable.
- Would prefer a reminder if Time Limits have been shut off.
Recommendations
- Was intrigued by the Time Limits banner thinking it appeared based on their current app activity.
- Would ignore apps recommendations and do their own thing because they also ignore their pediatrician’s advice.
Adding a Website or App
- Every user went in a loop after successfully adding a website thinking they needed to hit the active button that lets them add another website thinking it will confirm their selection.
- Liked the Toast confirming it was added but still hit the button to add a new site thinking the process wasn’t complete.
Time Limits Chart
- Easy to understand and is helpful.
- Chart helps them know if child is using all their time at once or spread out through the day.
User Quotes – Round 1
“Being able to extend their screen time just for the day is helpful because I need to do that often like when they need more time to work on a project.”
“I expected to see the Unlimited feature under the app or category, not separate in its own section.”
“It was hard to find where to edit weekends, but now I can’t find where to edit the weekday.”
“Unlimited becomes clear it’s exempted from being counted towards overall time when you change No Time Limit to Not Set.”
Round 2: Usability Testing on Proposed Flows
Based on insights from the first round of interviews, the design team proposed three updated flows for Time Limits. I conducted a round of usability testing with 8 participants to evaluate how well these new flows addressed the pain points we uncovered.
Testing Focus Areas:
- Clarity and Ease of Use: How easily participants could set and adjust overall device limits, app-specific limits, and category limits.
- Time Remaining Visibility: Whether the new design made it clear how much time was left and how to extend limits.
- Weekday/Weekend Customization: How intuitive it was to adjust limits for different days of the week.
- Extension of Time Limits: Whether the process of extending time limits felt natural and straightforward.
Key Design Changes and Testing Results
Status
- All users understood what “Custom” meant after they customized the time.
- Preferred it to be spelled out (1hr Weekdays).
- Only understood the abbreviated (1hr WD; 3hrs WE) after they saw it spelled out in the previous prototype.
- Having the status green helps to differentiate it better.
Time Limits – Different for Weekdays/Weekends
- No one today sets a different limit for a specific category or app for the weekdays vs weekends.
- Users typically set a time limit for an app to avoid their child from being overexposed to certain content and therefore don’t want them to ever exceed a set amount on certain days.
- Some were interested in this level of customization.
Customizing Days/Edit Weekends
- Liked the idea of editing weekends but thought customizing individual days was more flexible.
- Edit Weekends is mostly beneficial in the middle east since their weekends are Friday-Saturday, not Saturday-Sunday.
Apps/Categories
- Some missed the left arrow to expand and show all apps but after they learned it was there, it made sense.
- Expected the app list to show up from the right arrow.
- Loved the pop-up asking if they wanted to set the same time limit for the opposing weekday/weekend to save time.
- Liked the summary at a glance and apps/categories or its own screen but one user got confused and didn’t understand he had to go back.
Misc.
- Liked the concept of searching for apps.
- Thought it was helpful to provide Time Limits in 15-minute increments.
User Quotes – Round 2
“I love the option to customize individual days because it gives me more flexibility when customizing.”
“Editing Weekdays/Weekends and individual days is better for me. I like editing weekends but I can do that under individual days, but not the other way around.”
“I don’t limit apps for different days, it sends a mixed message. I am not limiting because of the time investment, but the content they are exposed to.”
“My initial instinct is not to click on the left arrow. It didn’t register visually for me.”
Proposed Flow:
- Users need an option to extend the Time Limit just for the day.
- Ability to customize individual days to accommodate for changing schedules.
- Saturday and Sunday are weekends except for in the middle east so we can keep the option to edit weekends but not make it a top-level function.
- Make the values stacked and green to better see the times.
- Users do not set different time limits for individual apps or categories for weekdays and weekends, but is a nice option to have if further customization is ever needed.
Final Design
After the usability testing in round 2, the design team iterated on the feedback and developed a polished version of the Time Limits feature. The final design included:
- Clearer visual hierarchy for setting limits.
- A more intuitive interface for adjusting limits across apps, categories, and devices.
- A more visible and informative countdown timer to help parents track remaining time.
- Weekday/Weekend toggle for custom scheduling.
- Streamlined time extension feature for ease of use.
Post-Launch Activities
To educate users on the updated feature, I created a Firebase message that would deploy as soon as the user opened the Time Limits card for the first time. I monitored the impressions for 3 months after launch and stopped the campaign after all users had updated to the new version.
Impact and Results
Post-launch data showed that users found the updated Time Limits feature much easier to navigate. Key results included:
- Engagement increased by 25% for parents actively managing Time Limits.
- User feedback related to Time Limits decreased by 30%, indicating that the redesign helped clarify user confusion.
Challenges and Future Recommendations:
Research showed that users did not use or did not want to use the existing “Reward” feature to extend their child’s Time Limits for just that day. Users felt that having to give their child more time on the internet to complete a project was a necessity that they had to do, not a reward for good behavior as the feature is intended. However, since we already have a way to extend time limits through the Reward feature, the team felt we did not need to have another way from within the Time Limits card.
Due to scope, other features such as customizing the daily time limits were not able to be added to the project and will be reevaluated for a future release.
Conclusion
The redesign of the Time Limits feature significantly improved usability by focusing on clarity, ease of use, and the specific needs of parents. Through a combination of user interviews and usability testing, I identified critical pain points and validated proposed solutions to enhance the user experience. This project underscores the importance of user research in guiding product design decisions to ensure that features meet the real needs of users and provide them with a seamless, intuitive experience.