The Windows Family Safety Challenge

My role: User Experience Manager

For this v1 service we needed to provide an easy-to-understand experience across a spectrum of complex tasks and unrelated products, divided between the local computer and an online service. The UX had to seamlessly guide parents through creating online and machine accounts and needed to be easy for kids to understand.

The plan: Ensure that the hoop-jumping burden was limited as much as possible to the backend and shielded from the user, while creating a user experience that works the way parents think about safety: "I don't want my child to see these kinds of web sites", "I don't want my child to use instant messaging when I'm not around", "I want to know what web sites my child is browsing when I'm not home", etc., and present a workflow that intuitively matches those tasks.

As the feature leader and User Experience manager on the project I championed a child-empowerment focus on our safety products, ensuring that we designed the features to help kids become active partners in their own safety, and to always encourage an open dialogue with their parents. For this critical suite of Windows features we needed to design an experience that was easy for even young kids to understand.

As an example, whenever kids were blocked from accessing a web site, sending an e-mail or using instant messaging, our designs always encouraged discussions with parents either through online requests or what we referred to as "over-the-shoulder", where parents could immediately over-ride a block by signing in with their administrator password:

A blocked web page experience

A blocked attempt to add an instant messaging contact

Our interaction pillars for parents centered on designing screens with clear calls to action and easily understandable tasks:

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We developed Windows Parental Controls and Windows Live Family Safety Settings in parallel and chose to make a clear distinction between the services for v1: Windows Live was designed around online content and services and used primarily for kids while browsing the web, while Windows PC provided robust application monitoring and time management features tied to machine accounts. Both services focus on creating multiple communication paths for kids and parents to discuss safety together, with innovative tool-based options for requesting and granting or denying access to content and applications.

At each step of the Family Safety experience, we made sure kids were aware of the decisions their parents made and we provided robust communication tools built directly into the workflow. As a result, the American Pediatric Association endorsed Windows Family Safety as a top-tier product in its class.

My Role

I authored the vision for the Windows Live Family Safety Settings online components and led the Program Management and User Experience teams for both the Windows and Windows Live offerings. Directly responsible for user flows and cross-product integration between Microsoft's online services.

The Results

Windows Parental Controls was a top-reviewed feature of the OS, and Windows Live Family Safety Setting won a number of prominent endorsements. The service has continued to grow and expand with a user experience focused on creating a collaborative dialogue between parents and kids.