To all parents of young drivers,
are you ready to hit the road?
During the fourth week of the Bootcamp, Ornikar visited us to present the challenge they are currently working on. As a reminder, Ornikar is a French company specializing in driving education and car insurance. It is revolutionizing the industry by offering an online driving license training program that is more flexible and accessible than traditional driving schools. Additionally, Ornikar provides insurance offers tailored to young drivers.
Together with my colleagues, Julie and Denys, we had 2 weeks to work on a challenge focused on the role of parents in their children’s learning process.
Business Challenges
Ornikar is often perceived as an online platform lacking proximity. Currently, its marketing and value proposition do not effectively target parents, who play a crucial role in their children’s driving education.
By 2025, Ornikar aims to fully integrate parents into its brand, marketing, and product strategy to better convert this audience and increase market share among young driving candidates.
Three main challenges have been identified:
• Engaging parents: Strengthening communication by highlighting Ornikar’s key benefits (quality, proximity, etc.).
• Onboarding parents: Simplifying the registration and purchasing process for parents.
• Involving parents: Developing new value propositions specifically for parents to stand out from competitors.
Among the proposed strategies, the last one shows the most potential.
Ornikar gave us 4 points of reflection on this issue:
Project Planning
DISCOVER . DEFINE . DEVELOP . DELIVER
As with all Product Design projects, we followed the Double Diamond model from problem to solution, starting with discovering and defining the problem, through to researching a solution and delivering the chosen solution.
Initial hypotheses
Before diving into the research and understanding of parents’ role in their children’s learning process—specifically regarding driving (theory, accompanied driving, and the driving test)—we first reflected as a team on potential hypotheses about parents’ expectations, drawing from our personal experiences. These hypotheses focused on visibility, responsibility, and emotional involvement. Additionally, we analyzed online reviews from parents who had evaluated Ornikar and shared their feedback.
Better Understanding Parents
📄 Methodology
To better understand parents who support their children in learning to drive, we recruited a panel of four parents for 45-minute user interviews to gather qualitative data.
🎯 Research objectives
These objectives aim to gain insight into the role and influence of parents in their child’s driving education, helping to identify opportunities to better support and engage them throughout the process.
👨👧 Profiles
Due to the short recruitment timeline, we only interviewed parents who were currently supervising their child’s driving practice. This is an inherent research bias that will significantly influence our observations and the solutions we develop throughout the project.
⭐ Key insights
Why?
• Bad driving habits & role modeling: Parents are aware they might pass on incorrect habits but still want to help.
• Knowledge transmission: “It’s not our job, and I didn’t want to tell them things that were wrong.”
• Complementary role to driving school: Parents see themselves as a support system rather than primary instructors.
• Knowledge transmission: “It’s not our job, and I didn’t want to tell them things that were wrong.”
• Complementary role to driving school: Parents see themselves as a support system rather than primary instructors.
Why?
• Active contribution to success: Parents feel responsible for ensuring their child becomes a skilled driver.
• Rapid acquisition of autonomy: “We live in the countryside, and if they want to study in big cities, they need to be comfortable with all types of roads.”
• Financial investment: Given the cost of driving lessons, parents want to maximize their child’s learning experience.
• Rapid acquisition of autonomy: “We live in the countryside, and if they want to study in big cities, they need to be comfortable with all types of roads.”
• Financial investment: Given the cost of driving lessons, parents want to maximize their child’s learning experience.
Why?
• Sensitivity to their child’s emotions: Parents adapt their approach based on their child’s confidence and stress levels.
• Awareness of skill level & areas for improvement: “For Mathilde, I had to go over all the basics. She hadn’t understood anything. But I identified what wasn’t clear, and after that, it was fine.”
• Supporting their child’s individual pace: Parents prioritize steady progress over speed to ensure effective learning.
• Awareness of skill level & areas for improvement: “For Mathilde, I had to go over all the basics. She hadn’t understood anything. But I identified what wasn’t clear, and after that, it was fine.”
• Supporting their child’s individual pace: Parents prioritize steady progress over speed to ensure effective learning.
Why?
• Real-life situations: Parents engage in real situations that foster trust and understanding.
• Reassuring parents: Parents provide comfort and encouragement, reinforcing the trust between them and their children.
• Openness in sharing: Parents and children openly share their experiences, strengthening their bond.
• Reassuring parents: Parents provide comfort and encouragement, reinforcing the trust between them and their children.
• Openness in sharing: Parents and children openly share their experiences, strengthening their bond.
🖊️ Our problématique
With these observations, we reflected on our own problem, which focuses on four key aspects:
To summarize our issue, here are the 4 points to remember:
• Improving the lack of visibility
• Fully involving their parents
• Valuing their experience
• Capitalizing on the mutual trust
Ideation and Benchmark Phase
Throughout ideation and brainstorming exercises, we generated numerous ideas. However, we had to prioritize and ultimately discarded some, such as quizzes, mini-games, simulations, and a community space.
An important note: since all our interviewed parents were involved in supervised driving, our ideas were heavily focused on this user type, potentially overlooking other parent profiles. Acknowledging this bias, we worked to broaden the functionalities to accommodate a wider range of parents.
Nevertheless, several key ideas were retained, which you’ll discover later in the feature presentation. For benchmarking, we drew inspiration from Strava for its statistical insights and How We Feel for its emotion-based tagging system.
Our Features to Engage Parents!
We selected several key ideas that seemed essential in addressing both our challenge and Ornikar’s needs. These included notifications, a parent dashboard, visibility on instructor feedback, statistics and planning, AI-personalized content, joint evaluation (instructor, child, and parent), and memory creation.
Since Ornikar currently lacks a dedicated parent interface—parents must use their child’s account—we aimed to create a parent-specific section. This would begin with a parent profile system, similar to Netflix’s multiple profiles. The bottom navigation would feature four main sections to keep things as simple as possible for parents:
• Home: Displays the parent’s name, the ability to log a driving session, the child’s profile with their current progress (learning for the theory test or practical driving), the option to manage multiple children’s profiles, and a financial summary (subscription details, upcoming payments, invoices, etc.).
cts, and other preferences ?
cts, and other preferences ?
• Theory Section (Code): For parents whose children are preparing for the driving theory exam. We didn’t explore this in-depth, as we focused on supervised driving.
• Driving Section (Drive): Designed for parents with children learning to drive. It includes session logging, a history of past sessions, progress tracking (number of sessions completed, kilometers driven for supervised driving, etc.), and session planning tools.
• Settings: To manage notifications, profiles, support contacts, and other preferences.
More details about some of the features!
📋 Dashboard with Statistics
Why?
• Provide parents with quick access to their child’s driving progress, package details, and billing for better financial management.
• Improve visibility on driving hours and remaining kilometers to help track progress toward the driving test.
• Improve visibility on driving hours and remaining kilometers to help track progress toward the driving test.
⏯️ Tracking Accompanied Driving Sessions with Parents
Why?
• Parents supervising their child’s driving practice can log sessions before starting a new trip, tracking details such as route, date and time, and distance covered.
• The goal is to modernize mileage tracking, replacing the traditional driving school logbooks, which are often unreliable and time-consuming.
• Additional details can be added afterward (explained below).
• The goal is to modernize mileage tracking, replacing the traditional driving school logbooks, which are often unreliable and time-consuming.
• Additional details can be added afterward (explained below).
📖 Observation Log
Why?
• Currently, only instructors have an official learning log. We wanted to give parents the ability to share feedback and observations with instructors as well.
✅ Joint Parent-Child Evaluation
Why?
• Inspired by the emotion-tracking app How We Feel, we designed a tagging system allowing both parents and children to evaluate their session at the end.
• The goal is to foster communication and strengthen their connection through shared feedback.
• The goal is to foster communication and strengthen their connection through shared feedback.
📘 Driving Session Summary
Why?
• Visibility: A clearer understanding of the completed route, whether the session was with an instructor or a parent.
• Learning: AI-powered content recommendations—articles, videos, or tips—generated based on the session data and curated by Ornikar’s marketing team to support learning.
• Learning: AI-powered content recommendations—articles, videos, or tips—generated based on the session data and curated by Ornikar’s marketing team to support learning.
🗓️ Session Planning
Why?
• Allow parents to see upcoming sessions at a glance.
• Enable scheduling of future accompanied driving sessions to better plan trips and encourage communication between parent and child.
• Enable scheduling of future accompanied driving sessions to better plan trips and encourage communication between parent and child.
What Do Parents Think About Our Features?
📄 Methodology
Now that the features have been prototyped, it’s time to test them with parents. We selected five parents for user testing. Additionally, we included two parents who had not experienced accompanied driving with their children to assess how well they understand our features.
🎯 Research Objectives
👨👧 Profiles
Insights and Modifications
Insights #1
The majority of parents understood the CTA to start recording a session, with 3 out of 5 clicking on it, but none (0 out of 5) managed to stop it on the first try.
Our Actions
• The system was perceived as engaging and modernized the accompanied driving tracking process. We therefore refined the feature by slightly adjusting the interface.
• There was uncertainty about whether the session had been recorded and how to stop it. We modified the CTA to end a session and added a notification to confirm when a session is completed.
• There was uncertainty about whether the session had been recorded and how to stop it. We modified the CTA to end a session and added a notification to confirm when a session is completed.
Insights #2
All parents struggled to understand the "favorite session" feature, with 4 out of 5 neither noticing nor clicking on the flag icon to save a session.
Our Actions
• We decided to remove the ability to favorite a session, as users did not understand the bookmark icon and, more importantly, did not see the value in saving a session.
• We also reused the color code from the planner—red for sessions with the instructor and green for accompanied driving—to display it on the right side of the sessions instead of indicating whether they are favorited or not.
Insights #3
The majority of parents engaged with the tags, with 4 out of 5 clicking on them, but 3 out of 5 expressed discomfort or skepticism about teenagers evaluating their parents.
Our Actions
• Since users interacted with the tags, we kept them in the second version.
• However, we improved the UX writing to make the adjectives more precise.
• As some parents felt uncomfortable being evaluated by their teenagers, we removed the ability for teens to assess their parents and kept only the tags related to the teenager’s driving experience.
• We also added an option to share or keep the evaluation private from the instructor for more confidentiality.
• However, we improved the UX writing to make the adjectives more precise.
• As some parents felt uncomfortable being evaluated by their teenagers, we removed the ability for teens to assess their parents and kept only the tags related to the teenager’s driving experience.
• We also added an option to share or keep the evaluation private from the instructor for more confidentiality.
Insights #4
All parents understood there was a calendar system but were unsure whether it showed their sessions or those with the instructor.
Our Actions
• The color coding and UX writing lacked clarity. We initially displayed past and upcoming sessions.
• It made more sense to highlight sessions with the instructor or parents separately.
• A clearer CTA (e.g., a “+” icon or “Add a session” label) should have been included. Currently, parents need to click on a date—some did, but not all. It’s worth testing whether the task of adding a session would have been successfully completed with a clearer prompt.
• It made more sense to highlight sessions with the instructor or parents separately.
• A clearer CTA (e.g., a “+” icon or “Add a session” label) should have been included. Currently, parents need to click on a date—some did, but not all. It’s worth testing whether the task of adding a session would have been successfully completed with a clearer prompt.
Other Minor Modifications
• Added a “Parent Badge” on the home screen to indicate whether the parent is an accompanist or supervisor, which determines whether the session recording feature is available.
• Parents found the instructor’s feedback valuable, but all misunderstood the AI-recommended topics, mistaking them for instructor advice. We clarified this with new wording (“Recommendations based on your session”) and omitted AI mentions to avoid skepticism.
• The observation booklet was often confused with the learning booklet. We renamed it “Observation Journal” simplified the wording, and added an info icon to clarify its optional nature for parents.
• The ability to add comments, audio, or selfies was well received but raised doubts about its long-term value. We kept the feature but will monitor its relevance over time.
• The observation booklet was often confused with the learning booklet. We renamed it “Observation Journal” simplified the wording, and added an info icon to clarify its optional nature for parents.
• The ability to add comments, audio, or selfies was well received but raised doubts about its long-term value. We kept the feature but will monitor its relevance over time.
Discover Our Iteration with the Latest Prototype
As a reminder, Ornikar is a French company operating in the French market, so we developed the prototype in French. Since this is a prototype, not all elements are clickable—blue areas will indicate where you can interact.
Conclusion and Future Iterations
Overall, we were very satisfied with our work, and Ornikar’s teams shared this sentiment. In just two weeks, we successfully designed a brand-new interface for the parent-dedicated app, a remarkably short timeframe.
With more time, we would have liked to explore additional improvements:
• Better understanding non-accompanying parents to offer them tailored tools. We also suggested that the session recording feature should not be displayed for parents who are not supervising.
• Enhancing visibility on billing and financial aspects, a crucial concern for parents.
• Leveraging existing statistics by integrating the child’s emotional state to track their confidence in driving.
• Adding driving conditions (weather, traffic) and, if technically feasible, route preparation to inform parents about key elements like right-of-way priorities and roundabouts.
Thank you for going through our work!