Case Study: Willuplay
When I first started my Master’s degree, I took a course called Introduction to Interaction Design. Every year, a general topic is chosen, and students are divided into groups to work on projects related to it. The topic for our year was the social life of Tallinners. My teammates were Luīza Stibe and Tõnis Bender.
Our mission: Boosting Tallinners’ social life!
After our lecturer, Nesli, gave us the project topic, our first task was to figure out what it really meant. Since the concept itself was very broad, we tried to narrow it down by defining each word.
- Boost: Supporting, encouraging, creating a sustainable tradition
- Tallinners: Sense of belonging, the time spent within the city
- Social life: Socializing, well-being, community
During the interview process with many different people, we noticed that parents, in particular, were struggling with their social lives. When we asked a mother about her social life, the answer she gave really summarized the situation:
“I’m a mom, so you can imagine.”
So, we decided to focus on parents. The interviews and desk research we conducted with other people greatly helped us decide on our approach. Parents were generally busy, and they had grown tired of visiting the same playgrounds for years. During an interview with someone working at the city council, we decided to broaden the concept of playgrounds to include spaces where parents could also enjoy themselves and use their creativity. We aimed to turn these playgrounds into “adventures” where parents could choose activities they could do with their children. This led us to our HMW question:
How might we encourage parents to choose their adventure in the playgrounds of Tallinn?
Will U Play?
After ideation, low-fi prototypes, and testing, we finally developed the concept we wanted to create, Willuplay. Willuplay is an app that provides parents with the opportunity to open their private yards to other families. It is an add-on to an already existing app called Willuwalk. Along with the existing goals of Willuwalk, we aim to encourage parents to follow their own adventure, provide a sense of community, allow them to share their workload with other parents, and help them manage their time.
Instead of coming up with a completely new app idea, we decided to build this as an add-on to the already existing Willuwalk, an Estonia-based app. Willuwalk is an app focused on helping parents who walk with strollers to socialize. Its main feature is a map where parents can connect with other walking parents, join them, discover family-friendly places, collect points, and see their ranking on a leaderboard.
On top of the existing features, we wanted to add the ability to organize public or private events and attend these events. One of the key steps before people can open their places to others is building trust. For this reason, public events organized in this concept are crucial, as they will allow parents to meet each other and get an idea of what kind of people they are. To showcase these events, we added a “tornado” symbol on the map.
The most important feature, however, is the ability for parents to organize events where they can open their private yards or homes to other adults and children. In the visual we created, Liza, a mother of three, is organizing a cheesecake baking event with a limit of three guests. Other users can visit Liza’s profile to see previous events she has organized, photos she has uploaded, and reviews. The idea is for children to socialize and spend time together, while adults can do the same.
By adding the event organizing and attending feature, we aimed to enhance community support for parents, help them learn and explore new skills, share workloads, and manage their time. We hoped our concept would make their experience of being a parent easier.
Willuwalk x Ixd.ma
One of our teammates, Tõnis, reached out to Willuwalk and presented our idea to them. We had a meeting with Willuwalk where we explained our concept, and we were featured on their social media pages.
📷 Photos by Tõnis Bender