UX Writing Challenge 2: Write Mobile Notifications
Write mobile notifications that an after-school sitter service sends to parents to communicate when their child is picked up from school.
Scenario
A single parent is subscribed to an after-school sitter service that sends a caregiver to pick up her child from school, drive the child home and care for the child until the parent arrives home.
Assumptions
- The parent has already completed a user profile
- Uber Sitter is for parents with children aged 3 to 15
- An iOS or Android app is required to use Uber Sitter
- Only the parent receives notifications or SMS messages
- Uber Sitters don’t communicate with children via the app for safety reasons as well as the likelihood that many children won’t own a mobile device
Guiding Principles
- Write notifications for the parent
- Write notifications with a safety-first mindset
- Write notifications with empathy
- Titles must be glanceable
- Descriptions must be short, but provide enough detail
- Names need to be written to accommodate multiple genders, spellings and pronouns
Task 1
Write a mobile notification that informs the parent that a caregiver is stuck in traffic and will be late to pick up her child.
Task 2
Inform the parent that the caregiver has picked up her child from school and is now on the way home.
Task 3
Inform the parent that her child has arrived home.
Final Thoughts
I found Task 1 to be the hardest notification to write because parents would be worried and upset if the notification said their child’s Uber Sitter was stuck in traffic. When I remembered how pilots tell passengers they’re “experiencing turbulence,” (not stuck in turbulence), I knew “experiencing” was the right word to empathetically communicate the situation.
This challenge was originally published on Jeff Shibasaki’s website.
