UX Lessons from a Virtual Baby Shower
It’s funny how something as simple as throwing a baby shower can turn in to a lesson in User Experience.
Back in January, when my wife announced to her family that we were going to have a baby, everyone was very excited. The family was all abuzz and the big topic was “The Baby Shower.” We both come from large families located all over the US, and everyone was going to converge in Columbus, OH for one epic shower. We were originally looking at numbers in the low 70s. Seriously.
Then, as the reality of traveling during lockdown became clear, everyone wanted to celebrate but no one knew how. We had a theme (children’s books!) We had food! We had a registry that needed to be filled! What were we going to do?
As the local ‘web guy’ and father-to-be, I suggested that we throw a virtual baby shower. I didn’t have any idea what that meant or how we would do it, I just knew that we wanted to celebrate and this seemed to be the only way.
As a result, I got some UX lessons sent my way and was reminded of how and why we do what we do.
Go where the people are, but also give them a place to come home to
Not everyone has a social media account or even an email address, so the first thing we did was set up a website. We had the date and time, our registry information, and a Zoom link. That was about all we knew. On the page, we wrote ‘check back next Friday for more!’ letting people know that, not only that we would have more information later, but when we would have more information. This had the added benefit of giving us a deadline.
We also took to social media. We set up a Facebook event, the appropriate Instagram account, and invited everyone we could. These had all the relevant information, along with posts pushing people to the website. It was important that people felt invited and welcomed in, which is why we reached out to them in the manner they felt most comfortable. My sister was brave enough to spearhead the ‘physical’ communications, managing RSVPs, and fielding questions from relatives.
With the website as our home hub though, we could control everyone’s experience. It was a focused area — we didn’t have to spend our time scrambling through everyone’s preferred communication preferences. Want to come to the shower? Just go to the website. It quickly streamlined our efforts and got everyone on the same page.
Look for opportunities for automation
To make our shower more ‘shower like’ we wanted to have games and contests, despite the fact we couldn’t sit in the same room together. One of these was a food competition. We had different categories like fruits and veggies, sweets, and savory, and we asked people to submit their contributions starting a week before the shower. Again, we looked for opportunities to make this as simple for people as possible. They could post to the Facebook page, tag us on Instagram, or just text me their images. We used a social media aggregator (shout out to Flockler for their excellent service) to bring all the different feeds together on the website. That way, people who did not have social media could still see all the different messages and goodies that were being produced.
Additionally, we had a guestbook, a place to leave advice, and a mad lib — all generated through Google Forms. Once the form was submitted it automatically generated a cute PDF and emailed it to the contributor, saved the data in a Google Sheet, and emailed a copy of the PDF to me for archiving. These would later be printed in a physical book for a tangible keepsake of the event.
The key was the automation. People could use their own methods, their own technologies, and everything would come back to the home. We had contests, games, and books that we could all share, and I didn’t have to worry about handling any of it during the party.
Give people something to look forward to (and remind them about it)
For some people, especially this early into lockdown, the digital party was a hard sell. People were disappointed about not being able to see the family, and were already tired of sitting on Zoom calls — we had to hype it up. We wanted people to feel like they were coming to an event, so we sent out proper (printed) invitations that matched the design of the website. When we got closer, we launched the website and the social pages, and told our close families to ‘spread the word!’ Shortly after that, we rolled out the contest, giving people enough time to think about what they wanted to do and have some fun with it.
By the time the event came, we had touched base with them at least 4 separate times in the months leading up to it, more frequently as the date approached. Even when the party was in full swing I would hop on the Zoom and remind people, ‘don’t forget to sign the guest book!’ ‘have you played the games yet?’ — our enthusiasm needed to be strong so that people would join us in creating the atmosphere. For a lot of people, it was a strange and unusual way to throw a party, we needed their buy-in and we earned it by keeping them engaged.
People want to help, you should let them
A new baby can be a very exciting thing, so we had a little built-in buzz for our project. My mother-in-law, who was going to plan the original party, wanted to help in whatever way she could but felt a bit powerless as an admittedly ‘non-digital’ person. Her contribution should have been obvious, but it took a little thinking to figure out the best way to bring her in on the project.
We had her mail us the decorations she was going to use for the party. All of them. We decked out the walls and dressers with all sorts of book-favored decorations. Anyone that called into the Zoom instantly recognized ‘the party room.’ We kept the webcam far enough back that you could see the whole room and not just my wife’s face. My sister sent us a cookie bouquet since she was originally going to be taking care of desserts. It was fun and helped my wife feel celebrated. The more festive we could make our environment, the more everyone on the call could feel like they were part of the fun.
When you’re creating something new, people actively want to be involved. This is what’s behind so many successful Kickstarter projects, and is an important detail to remember no matter what type of work you’re doing. Show people your work, bring them along for the ride, and they’ll be that much more invested in the outcome.
Keep an eye on scale
A quick note on scale. Not all baby showers are 80 person affairs. We had people call in when they could over a few hours. Some people hung out for an hour or two, other people popped in for 15 minutes, wished us well, and popped back out again.
Since we knew there were a lot of people involved, we kept the format as flexible as possible. Trying to get that many people to commit to a giant zoom call and follow some sort of schedule would have been a logistical nightmare. We offered up discussion questions every so often, and there was a running conversation and list of baby advice running in the chat window. That way even people who were having trouble with the audio, or even just having trouble managing the chaos of a giant zoom room, could contribute. The goal was to keep it light and easy,
For a smaller group, we could have constrained the time a bit more and maybe played some games live and in the moment, but that wasn’t realistic with what we were working with. On any project, the scale of the audience should drive the format, not the other way around.
Finally, remember why you’re here
With every UX engagement, I ask the question, “What is the problem we’re trying to solve?” Another way of asking that is, “Why are we all here?” I find that this helps keep everything in perspective. Every time people would get caught up in details, or stress would start mounting, we’d say, “Well, we’re doing this to celebrate, so if we all just come and have some fun it should be great.”
This little dose of perspective helped people remember that we were working together to solve a common problem, and in the end — delivered a fantastic baby shower that crossed the continent.
