UX Design Certification Project - Part 1

At the beginning of 2025, I made the decision to pursue Google's UX Design certification as a way to grow professionally while continuing to use my design and critical thinking skills to help others. After exploring various career paths, I was drawn to UX because it involved both creativity and logic, and it gave me the potential to improve everyday experiences for real people.

As part of the certification program, I was tasked with designing a mobile app and responsive website, and documenting my process in the form of a case study. Drawing on my recent experience as an elementary educator, I chose to create an app that helps families search for after-school care and manage payment for those services. I essentially focused on the consumer experience of a broader management platform that would also have care providers as users on the administrative side. I decided to call this hypothetical product AfterSpace.

The problem AfterSpace addresses is clear: Finding and managing care for school-aged children is often difficult, fragmented, and time-consuming, especially for busy parents and families of children with unique needs. Working parents often have to rely on relatives, friends, or neighbors to look after their elementary schoolers because consistent and quality after-school programs are hard to find or access.

The goal of AfterSpace is to centralize search, enrollment, and payment into one accessible, trustworthy platform, reducing the guesswork and stress families experience when trying to secure reliable care outside of school hours.

Understanding the Problem: How I Built a Foundation for AfterSpace

For this project, I conducted secondary research to understand the challenges families face when securing after-school care. I read through various parenting forums to seek insight into user goals, experiences, and frustrations related to A) finding care for and B) managing and paying for the care of elementary-aged children. Within respective spreadsheets, I logged what users said about searching for after-school programs and managing their accounts using software like Procare or Brightwheel, as well as through direct interaction with care facility staff. This helped build a picture of what families experience day-to-day as they navigate care decisions.

After analyzing my data with AI assistance, several pain points emerged consistently across different user types, directly informing my design decisions:

• Lack of availability – Due to high demand, many after-school programs are full or have families on waitlists. The app should let users see real-time availability and elevate programs with open spots.
• Scheduling issues – Parents struggle to align care with demanding or inflexible work schedules. The app should highlight flexible pickup and transportation-friendly programs.
• Budget constraints – Affordable care is often hard to find for low-income or benefit-eligible families. The app should flag programs offering financial assistance.
• One-size-fits-all programs – Special needs support is difficult to find. The app should spotlight providers with relevant training and inclusive care capabilities.
• Short billing cycles – Weekly billing feels burdensome. The app should allow payment flexibility, autopay, and upfront scheduling.
• Payment methods – Limited or outdated payment options are inconvenient. The app should support digital wallets and cards.
• Hidden fees – Parents are caught off guard by extra costs. The app should include transparent, itemized pricing during enrollment.

After determining the major pain points within my data, I organized the following potential user groups based on their primary challenges and motivations:

• People looking for affordable after-school care options
• People managing after-school logistics for multiple children
• Parents of children with special needs requiring individualized after-school care
• People relying on public school aftercare programs with limited availability
• People seeking convenient and cost-effective childcare payment solutions
• People struggling with after-school transportation options
• Parents of homeschooled children seeking structured social or care programs

I then looked for patterns in these groups to identify core user goals, emotional touchpoints, and recurring pain points, ranging from confusing enrollment processes to inflexible payment systems. These insights were transformed into user stories using a simple structure:

| “As a [type of user], I want to [action], so that [benefit].”

This helped ground the emerging product vision in the lived experiences of families and positioned me to address real, validated problems with intention.

To humanize this research, I created two detailed user personas:

• Sarah, a working mother navigating after-school care for both her neurotypical and special needs children.
• Miguel, a single father balancing a demanding job and the logistical stress of unreliable care solutions.

I then mapped out Miguel’s user journey, exploring the practical and emotional experience of enrolling in care through an app. Each step (searching, reviewing options, checking availability, enrolling, and managing care) was matched with emotional insights and opportunities for product improvement, such as real-time availability, transparent policies, side-by-side program comparisons, and seamless payment experiences.

Competitive Analysis & Key Insights

To position AfterSpace effectively, I conducted a competitive audit of three childcare platforms: Care.com, Winnie, and Upwards. Each offers valuable services, but none deliver a complete solution for families seeking after-school care.

• Care.com offers direct booking and payments with a large network of babysitters and short-term after-school camps, but the childcare experience is overall tailored more to babies and younger children.
• Winnie has a strong community and filtering system, but doesn’t offer enrollment or payment features.
• Upwards focuses on affordability and government support, but skews heavily toward early childhood care.

This analysis revealed two major takeaways that shaped AfterSpace’s design direction:

1. The market lacks a seamless, full-service after-school care platform. No competitor currently combines robust filtering, direct enrollment, and payment functionality in a way that prioritizes after-school needs. AfterSpace is positioned to do all three—removing friction from the parent experience and becoming the go-to tool for busy families.
2. Special needs accessibility is an underserved gap. No major competitor clearly highlights programs that serve children with behavioral or developmental differences. AfterSpace will introduce features like inclusive care filters, provider badges, and trust-building reviews to help families make confident, informed decisions.

This research process gave me more than just a list of pain points; it revealed how care decisions impact the daily flow of family life and the emotional labor involved in arranging something as essential as after-school care. By grounding my product vision in these findings, I’ve positioned AfterSpace to be a genuinely helpful, empathetic, and inclusive tool for the families who need it most.

Understanding what I needed to build helped me figure out how I could put it together during the ideation and prototyping phases for this project.