HappyCare

Problem Statement  

How might we make the process to research, secure, and confirm day care child care options for parents so that it takes less time to secure, there is transparency on status, and on demand on short term need?

Problem Background  

As a new parent, the process of securing day care is daunting, time consuming, and in every daycare it is done differently. Target parent user persona are expecting band parents of children under 5 in the US. Wait lists can be as short as 1 month to as long as 1.5 years. As an experienced parent, if you move to a new geographic location or have multiple children, day care availability and confirmation of enrollment for a certain time frame are not transparent. Local daycares also struggle to understand and track demand for new child care needs. 

Research Insights

User Pain Points

• Navigating waiting lists
• Time commitment calling daycares
• Lack of transparency on immediate availability

Supporting Data

From my user research completed, the goal was to understand people’s day care child care search to enrollment confirmation experience. Below are some highlights around the learnings of methods of contact, amount of time it takes to confirm daycare availability, and average waitlist times for day cares. 

• Top tool used to find new daycares is Google Search.
• Phone is the primary method of contact for availability in queries, waiting list status updates, and pricing information sharing.
• It takes 60% of the parents on average 2 weeks to get in contact with daycares to understand initial availability.
• 40 % of parents it takes them on average 1 week to hear back from a daycare. 
• 80 % of parents had to wait 6 months or more on a waiting list for their child to be placed.

Landing on the Solution

HappyCare will be the place for parents to understand what daycare options are available and also confirm the waiting list availability in real time to enrollment.

Goals 

1. Reduce the time it takes parents to search and confirm daycare enrollment. 
2. Increase transparency of daycare availability for both short term and long term parent daycare needs.
3. Reduce the stress and load on parents that daycare searching usually takes. 

Explanation of Solution 

App that is able to use a user’s location or specified location to show daycares and their estimated availability for short term and long term daycare needs. This search would also incorporate if there is a single child need or multiple children. Once a user adds their family to the waiting list they can see a projected enrollment start date in a live way.

Future Steps

Prototype an app that is able to instantly pull up daycares based on a user’s location and rank them based on soonest available in (days) and if greater than 7 days (weeks) and if greater than 4 weeks (months). Demo how a user can select a daycare and then be shown in real-time their place in the waiting list with an estimate enrollment start date.

Other Areas to Expand to Further in Roadmap

• Daycare aspect of having them use an app to manage waiting lists as well as have their capacity publicly available is something that needs to be reviewed further.
• Parents Daycare scheduled visits and assuring “good fit” can be more important than length of time to communicate to a daycare or waiting list time
• Pricing information is not widely publicized or known to parents before calling daycares for availability
• Personal Referrals are a huge way to cut down on time in finding other “mom” or “ dad” recommended daycares. How can we incorporate personal referrals into the app to help have family recommended options more openly known?