Design a meditation app for kids.

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Design a meditation app for kids.

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.

Asked at Google over a year ago

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Nidhi Dubey · Answer 1 · 2022-04-18T21:11:46+0000

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:

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

Users of the Product:

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:

#	Pain Point	Priority
1	Kids are exposed to social media, gadgets, competetive lifestyle - all of which is reducing focus and attention span. Increased cases of ADHD, RLS etc in kids	High
2	Kids are not aware of the importance of meditation and find regular meditation practices boring & uninteresting	High
3	Parents of kids are not available at home & are unable to teach meditation to their kids	High
4	Parents cannot turn on mediation videos and leave their children with it as there is no way to monitor their session	High
5	Meditation need of kids depends on their lifestyle, personslity, family situation & age	Low
6	Parents find it difficult to impart curated teachings & affirmations to their children as only standard modules are available online	Low

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

Solutions as features of the app:

#	Features	Priority (Impact/Cost)
1	Sign up for parents using SSO	High
2	Freemium offering model with 3 plans available: 1. Free with ads and limited features 2. Premium access which is adfree and access to all features	Low
3	Option to create additional profile in case kid is old enough to operate app on their own. Parent profile will have additional features capable of remote monitoring	High
4	Profile Section - Parents to answer questions on child's age, gender, behavior, personality, interests and hobbies, medical issues, family ambience.	High
5	Recommendation engine takes input from profile section to suggest appropriate length and style of meditation every day. Meditation plan section on the app helps user to view upcoming previously completed, today's session and upcoming plan.	High
6	Meditation session will be based on one of many themes - superheroes, anime, mytological characters etc depending on kid's interest	High
7	Meditation session will be one of many formats - doodling, singing, breath work or guided visualization to ensure kid is interested in the routine	High
8	Remote monitoring mode can be turned on by parent where the camera on kid's phone is turned on and kid's activities are remotely monitored.	High
9	Record session mode can be turned on by parent where kid's activities are recorded and can be viewed by parent's profile	Low
10	Customized affirmation or activity plan can be made using parent's profile where input text is converted into guided meitation audio	Low
11	Feedback from parent and kid is recorded anytime after the session is over in the form of rating and review. This is taken as feedback for the recommendation engine	High
12	Analytics and monitoring can be done by parent profile. Parameters such as number of hours meditated, number of sessions completed and growth in these metrics is shown.	High
13	Game Mode in which key metric are used to arrive at global ranks and unlocking new levels & themes of meditation	Low
14	Social feature of app allows kids and parents to invite their friends/peers, follow, their activty, compare their performances and recommend meditation videos	Low

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

Clay Nichols · Answer 2 · 2022-03-29T14:02:53+0000

A framework for answering this Google product design question.

Clarify that this is for teaching children to be able to do a style of relaxing meditation where thoughts quiet down?
Interviewer Answer:YES.
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.
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.

10.1 goal is success for the app itself. It did it's job. However, the 10.2 measures the User's desired Outcome. 10.3 is a measure of the success of the App. If we can achieve 10.1 it will likely lead to 10.2, which will likely lead to 10.3

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.

srinatar · Answer 3 · 2022-11-24T20:00:20+0000

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

context: i am the PM in this on-prem meditation and i want to offer an app so that parents can use this app to teach their kids around how to mediate.

questions: is this restricted to kids only or adults can also use? -> no such restriction. but we want kids to be able to use it.

Ok, meditation is something adults are taking it seriously because of its perceived benefits. and there are apps such as calm, and headspace in this area. so, we offer an app allows the young generation to stay in our ecosystem. so, I will propose that the primary goal for is to create habit so that users of this use at least 10 min a day to meditate so that when they reach adulthood they stay in our ecosystem - whether in on-prem or our app.

goal - 1. user acquisition, 2. daily engagement with our users.

user segment

1. parents -> who want to help kids meditate,

2. kids -> influencer and not really buyers.

3. meditation - company.

pain points for parents who want to bring mediation habit in kids -> (factor for priority: goal alignment, problem severity)

1. how can my kids use this app ? should i give my phone to him or he needs his phone? (highly aligned, moderate)

2. i have kids in different ages. how do i set this up for all the kids in the family. (highly aligned, moderate)

3. does this app enable my kid to to see this as fun activity? (highly aligned, severe)

4. some kids will easily progress to next level while some needs more help ? how do i track my kids progress? (highly aligned, moderate)

--

we will focus on how I as a parent can make meditation fun so my kid will want to use this app everyday.

solution (evaluation criteria: alignment towards goal, impact on the problem, effort, )

1. google home skill app that parents can use at home in the morning or before dinner. this can make it a family practice. (highly aligned, high impact, low effort)

2. app that comes with reward token that kids can exchange for robux . every week they practice at least 3 times in a week, they get a reward token. parents can determine how should kids redeem this token for. (aligned, medium impact, medium effort)

3. build a device + app (let us say MeditatePro) that leverage generative AI and can tailor meditation walk through based on the kids interests. so the kid will be focused on concentrating during the mediation and the device can measure how your blood flows to continuously learn and provide a fun experience for the kids. (highly aligned, high impact, high effort)

MVP: google home skill

eventually, build a device + app so parents can give this device to their kids. kids will find the AI interesting to speak to and can guide them on meditation and provide reports to parents.

metrics:

1. no of time downloaded

2. no of time mediation exercises per active user in a week

3. week over week growth of total meditation exercises in a week

4. CSAT score from our users.

5. device bought and device returned.

summary: we want to build a meditation app for kids. we chose parents and decided to build a google home skill for MVP and then launch a generative-Ai based device that kids can wear it to improve their meditation skills.

SPD_2017 · Answer 4 · 2022-06-23T18:35:16+0000

Clarifying questions:

Is this a mobile app or desktop app/ TV App?
Are there any specific challenges of existing apps that facilitate meditation that you want to me consider while building this app?
Are there any specific meditation techniques that you would like me to focus on?
Are we targeting a specific age group of kids? Or is it ok for me to consider that 5-15 years old will use this app?

For the exercise today, I will assume that the interviewer clarified that this is a mobile App for 5-15 year old kids to learn and practice meditation.

I would like to analyze the users of the product, identify whether there are any pain points/challenges with the apps that are available today

Propose a structure:

Who are the users? And why do they want to use this app?

5-15 year old kids

Kids that want to learn about meditation
Kids that want to practice meditation on regular basis
Kids that want to track meditation progress

Parents or caregivers

Want to encourage kids to follow meditation
Track the progress
Help kids find techniques that are fun and enjoyable

Let's focus on the Kids since they are the primary user of this product -

Comparing existing apps on the market in this domain, there are some gaps that I have identified-

Meditation app and techniques not catered for kids as users
1. Content
2. Meditation routines
3. Duration of each meditation technique
User engagement could be an issue due to kids having shorter attention span compared to adults.
There is no reward system for kids to be excited about the app

How to fix these gaps?

A kids age appropriate meditation app
Make it intuitive and fun
Introduce some sort of reward system for learning, following meditation in the app
Work on improving user engagement by keeping shorted meditation routines

Solution:

Now that I have identified the user requirements and gaps with existing products, I would like to propose core features and assess the impact/priority of these features,

Feature 1: When a new user sign-ups, showcase easy to use, fun colorful UI (priority M)

Feature 2: Users get learn and practice workflow recommendations in app with shorter duration learn meditation workflows (HIGH)

Feature 3: meditation workflow recommendations based on user age- 5-8,8-10,10-13, 13+

Feature 4: in app notifications for reminders to practice at user configuration interval (High)

Feature 5: Send email summary to parent at configurable frequency, every week, every month. (M)

Feature 6: Analyze usage and provide personalized recommendations to tweak or adopt a different method of meditation. (M)

A reward system to improve engagement, users receive points for practicing a specific meditation routine, increasing their duration they spend meditating. (H)

To summarize my proposal, As a MVP:

I will develop a mobile app for kids to learn and practice meditation that will offer age appropriate, curated meditation learning paths.
Users can sign up to practice meditation where app reminds them when it's time to practice meditation.
The app will offer a point based reward system where parents can incentivize kids to practice meditation.
The app will send summary to parents so that parents can track the progress, encourage kids

As a future enhancement:

App can offer ML backed usage based personalized recommendations to users, encourage them to try new techniques

Success metrics:

Total number of hours that users spend meditating

Number of app downloads over time

Number of user sign ups on the app

VenkatR · Answer 5 · 2022-04-03T19:40:48+0000

Context :

We are Company that Does Meditation Classes on prem right now. We do classes for adults but are looking into building an app in order induce kids to Meditation

Geography : US

Medium Of Coaching : English

The current coaches need no specific training to coach kids

Focused on Kids with No Disabilities

Goal:

There are a few companies that do Meditation Apps. Headspace and Calm are companies that I know of. They are geared more towards adults than kids.

This puts us in a position to get into this Market and get a First mover advantage.

We will benefit from acquiring more customers and eventually becoming sticky by expanding into adjacent areas such as a Family meditation Time, Classroom Meditation time, Sports team meditation time etc.

Hence: The goal for this app will be Customer acquisition Customer acquisition for the Meditation App

Metrics : Daily Average Users

Constraints : None

User Segmentation: (Reach)

Teachers in school - High
1. Kids need to be handheld into learning
2. A self driven approach may be tough as there is a chance of them discontinuing meditation
Kids Aged 2-5 - M
Kids Aged 5-10 - M
Kids Aged 10-15 - M
1. A self driven approach may be tough as there is a chance of them discontinuing meditation. Hence 2,3,4 and 5 maybe difficult
2. This jeopardizes our goal of building a CLV through customer acquisition as even though we might have a customer they would have churned due to a lack of handholding
Sports Coaches- Low
1. Not every Kid will be playing a sport. Hence the reach of this approach is Low

We can focus on building a meditation app for teachers to help them run group meditation classes for kids

Key Pain Points

No.	PainPoint	Reach	Confidence
1	Lack Of Curriculum Having a comprehensive curriculum is	H	H
2	Coordinating start and end times for for a group meditation	M	H
3	Demonstrating benefits to other stakeholders such as management, parents and other students	H	H
4	Incentivizing students for continued commitment	H	H
5	Providing personalized coaching for kids facing difficulties in Meditation	L	H

Since we will have to come up with an MVP, We will focus on addressing pain points 1, 3, and 4

Solutions:

No.	Solution	Reach	Confidence
1	Design a 20 week guided audio driven curriculum for Kids to Improve Focus , Decrease Anxiety Our instructors will design these two curriculums and have it available on the app	H	H
2	We can have the Meditation app pull academic, extracurricular and sports results from the School Management database and demonstrate how meditation is helping drive tangible outcomes in those areas	H	M
3	Incentivize the kids with a certain number of coins after each Meditation Session Eventually, allow them to trade these points for getting extra credit on submissions and assignments	H	H
4	Once the app becomes popular and there are many kids using the app, learn from the data and make recommendations on How many hours of Meditation can help take the kids from a certain level to the other ( in academics, sports, extracurricular etc) E.g.- If the kid landing a top 5 finish in a 100 m sprint needs to improve his/her focus to land into top 3, he/she will have to meditate for 5times a week for 4 months	H	M
5	Train the trainer- Conduct group meditations for teachers on a weekly basis to help them get better at meditation	H	H

For the MVP, Focus on 1, 3 and 5

Risks

No.

Risk

Mitigation

1

Teachers don't adopt Meditation

Work with school management

Alternately, watch out for teachers, parents and management who are our current customers and land through them

Metrics:

Daily number of kids meditating

Number of kids meditating more than 5 times a week

% of teachers attending the train the trainer sessions