Research project on app usability requirements

Research Project on app usability requirements – 2nd year Bachelor 2018

Aim: Advice the company Vilans in which features their application to support the young carers should include.
Theme: The human in technology
Expertise area: User & Society and Math, Data and Computing
Client: Vilans and Coosto

This project is about an analysis of existing social media platforms to learn more about young carers and their online behavior.

In the Netherlands there are many informal carers. When thinking about an informal carer one might think about an adult man or woman who supports disabled or sick family members by providing unpaid care. However, many forget that there are also young carers: carers between the ages of 4 and 24.
Being a young carer can affect a young person’s social life, education, self-confidence and health. ME>WE is a project of Vilans to support Young carers with an online application.

To find out which features might be important to implement in a new app aimed at young carers, such as the ME-WE app, the following research question was formed: Which features of social media are used by and popular among young carers?
To answer this, it is important to explore: which social media platforms in the Netherlands and English speaking countries young people (under the age of 24) are currently most active in, which features of social media platforms are most used by young carers, and which of these features could be requirements for the ME>WE app.

Our hypothesis was that relevant features for the app would provide information about being a ‘good’ young carer, allow organization of events, connect the young carer to other young carers, and create social embeddedness, trust and a strong group identity.

During out research, we analyzed 5 social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and YouTube . The platforms were searched for the following keywords: Young Carer and derivatives of the term, jonge mantelzorger and jonge mantelzorgers.

In the first phase of the research, we performed an analysis with the Coosto platform to get an idea of the use of keywords on the platforms and the activity around those keywords.
During this phase we investigated the platforms: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Instagram.

In the second phase we did a social media analysis by hand to get more detailed and in depth qualitative information about the use of these keywords on the platforms. For every platform we had the criterion that the counted keywords, posts or accounts should only be aimed at or written by young carers, not caregiving/carers in general.

During Phase 1 (the Coosto analysis) our results showed that:

• out of the analyzed platforms, the Facebook platform is most used to promote the term young carer (based on the amount of posts and groups dedicated to the term). Followed by twitter.

• In contrast, Instagram showed no results on Coosto.

• By analyzing what other terms and hashtags accounts who posts about young carers write about, we were able to identify the most used associated topics. Examples of these are house (huis), help (hulp) and support (ondersteuning).

During Phase 2 (social media analysis by hand) our results showed the following findings:

Twitter:

• Twitter is mostly used by organizations.

Facebook:

• Pages are mainly used by charities, communities and organizations.
• Groups are mostly private

Tumblr:

• Tumblr is mostly used by young carer individuals
• Majority of posts have a diary format and are anonymous
• Feature “Asks” where users anonymously ask questions.

Instagram:

• Large number of informative accounts from institutes
• Small number of accounts managed by young carers

YouTube:

• Majority videos used for raising awareness
• Some of the channels are about events, activities or courses organized for young carers

From the content, we can conclude that young carers like to communicate anonymously. Results also indicate that young carers do not like to place themselves in the spotlights. Many groups were focused on young carers in a specific region, (perhaps) aimed at connecting them.

Several limitations of our study could be found: use of limited keywords, language limitations and inaccuracy of the monitoring software.

To conclude, based on our analysis we advised the following requirements for the ME-WE app:

• News page (showing upcoming events)
• Ability to follow associations
• Possibility to create (private) groups
• Ability to ask questions
• Possibility to befriend with other users
• Anonymity or confidentiality (eg. nickname)