Design Management and Strategy for Parent Effectiveness Training UK(PET)
This report is part of an MDes project produced for Ravensbourne University and P.E.T UK. We have worked with Client, Val (the current license holder for P.E.T) to complete this design project. This report reflects the outcomes of the project.
RESEARCH, INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION
As we learned about the organisation, our first step was to understand the target market and relevant competitors that P.E.T had. Examining the products and services other parenting courses had to offer, helped us realise what set P.E.T apart. Further on in the project came in our ethnographic research which was conducted using a series of interviews with three different groups of participants. The first group was the instructors that delivered the course. As we began to put together the information from this series of interviews, we formed our first set of insights and reflections from these instructors. The second set of interviews was based on questioning the past participants of the course and using their feedback to arrive at a problem statement and strategy. During this series of research, I learned more in detail about how parents might form opinions about parenting courses, the concerns surrounding a commitment to an eight-week-long course as well as what was truly beneficial and missing in the service provided by P.E.T. This helped us to develop problem statements regarding what might be lacking in the services provided by P.E.T. A few examples of these statements were as follows: “P.E.T is perceived as old-fashioned and is not very accessible to its target market”, “there is an absence of community between instructors and parent participants within the organisation itself” and “instructors delivering the courses make insufficient earnings due to the lack of participants”. These insights and conclusions helped model our design strategies and push for more ethnographic research.
This led to the third series of interviews and surveys. The last group aimed to focus on the potential target market for P.E.T and was fulfilled by parents. We intended to talk to as many
parents as we could find around us including our tutors, the staff at Ravensbourne University, family, and neighbours. During this, our goal was to be able to understand the picture from the perspective of a parent. This included information such as, what parents perceive parenting courses to be, how different cultures affect parenting and therefore their outlooks on such courses and how a parent would go about looking for a parenting course. Our research consisted of creating personas and developing stories to try and predict a possible phase each parent might go through before encountering P.E.T. This allowed us to investigate different family dynamics that might lead people to choose a parenting course and how they would choose the right one. Our third phase of research and interviews led to some very interesting and intriguing insights about parental mindset. While some conversations led me to realise that most parents carry with them a negative understanding and perception of what parenting courses are, some of them are not fully aware of these opportunities available to them. Moreover, we showed parents the materials (such as website, brochure, reading materials of the course) that P.E.T is using and promoting and received many grimacing faces of dissatisfaction. Interviewees were “confused” and “scared” about the idea of parenting and the P.E.T course.
The lack of knowledge and undesirable perception about parenting classes within parents and couples has led to my understanding of why P.E.T may be falling behind on receiving customers. In this report, I will aim to discuss these ideas and perceptions that lead parents to look down upon parenting courses, the effects it has had on the P.E.T organisation and how our design strategies can help strengthen the parenting course community.
The arrival of a baby is an occasion of celebration and joy, however, parenting can be anarchic. American paediatrician Dr Benjamin Spock says that most parents don’t ‘learn’ how to parent but are influenced by what they were exposed to while growing up. “Fathers and mothers don’t really find out how to care for and manage children from books…. children” (Spock, n.d.). Despite this, there seems to be a perception that mothers and fathers will know what to do and that parenting falls into place if children are loved enough (Mead, Blog). However, this is an arguable statement, given the responses from my research. Parents and prior P.E.T participants did not hesitate to mention that they faced challenges during changing family dynamics as their children transitioned from different phases of life. Why then do parents and families still hesitate from asking for help or turning towards a parenting class and how might have this have affected P.E.T as an organisation?
“PARENTING COURSES ARE FOR BAD PARENTS”:
Parenting courses can be viewed as a long-condemned service that in society is perhaps portrayed as an authoritative figure telling someone how to raise their children (Smith, 2016). This understanding can be linked to the concept of the ‘nanny state’ which conveys the idea of certain policies or the government interfering with one’s personal choices, which may be the case with free or subsidised parenting courses provided by the government in the country. During my group’s ethnographic research, I understood that many parenting courses in the country have expert models that tend to come across as instructional or even judgemental, rather than being supportive and nurturing. Therefore, it is no surprise that the stigma around parenting classes exists.
Throughout our research, we were presented with a lot of information that led us to understand where and why P.E.T may be falling short. As I already mentioned, some of this had to do with the branding of the organisation, however, I realised that there was a greater underlying cause that didn’t come from P.E.T but from the target market itself. One of our interviewees, when asked about parenting courses, said, “I think of a new parent who is just trying to get the grip of this or someone who might be struggling with parenting”. When asked about why they may not engage with parenting classes, this was their response — “seems like it wouldn’t be a very interactive thing between you and your children and might interfere between changing family dynamics that are very personal”. These responses suggested a lack of interest to engage with a parenting course due to prior formed knowledge about what one may get from it. However, the stigma about parenting courses also stems from the term ‘parenting course’ itself. According to the Cambridge dictionary, the word ‘course’, is a set of classes on a subject, usually leading to an exam or qualification (Dictionary.cambridge.org). This further proves that when people hear the word ‘parenting course’, they might be immediately put off thinking of it as a class to earn a qualification of being a good parent. This was also the case with our interviewees who mentioned that parenting could be scary and going to a class can make them feel like they need help with their personal and changing family dynamics, i.e., making them a ‘bad parent’. However, it is also vital to consider another set of opinions that might create a new scenario and opportunity for P.E.T. A group of parents that find, acknowledging a need for attending a parenting class makes them feel as though they are a “good parent who acts, cares for and does not ignore its parenting duties” (Lopez, 2020). A small group of parents who have considered or attended workshops for parenting, mentioned that they could feel satisfaction knowing that they want to choose a path of help to give and receive the best for their children. A parent on Netmums also shared how she thinks her idea of a ‘good parent’ comes with accepting help, taking advise and wanting to grow to pass that on to your children — “as a parent, you never stop learning, good parents will still except advise, and even welcome it. Good parents always strive to do their best, under any situation, good parents question their abilities offer support and take on board constructive help” (M., 2011). Observing my research and insights I believe that the stigma behind parenting courses is something that has been developed through centuries of parenting and a misinformed view on how such courses may benefit the family. How then is it possible to be able to persuade parents or shed light on the idea that good parenting can start with accepting help?
UNDERSTANDING THE CONCEPT OF PERSUASION:
Now that the main issues and insights have been highlighted and discussed, I will try and explore how behavioural sciences can help bring in persuasion and change one’s behaviour towards an act. One of the many insights we gained from the research was the lack of knowledge and poor perception of parenting courses. To address this problem, there is a need to develop an appropriate design strategy that would lead to a brief and design solution. As a group, our design strategy targeting this problem was to “change the perception and
understanding of parenting courses”, which would, in turn, benefit P.E.T as an organisation by encouraging more parents to feel positive about, and approach parenting classes. However, once a strategy is proposed, there may be a couple of things to consider- How will it be taken forward? Is it cost-effective? Is it possible for a single representative of the P.E.T to pursue it?
As we looked for solutions to address this strategy, I began to realise that it is in fact, quite difficult to persuade a group of people to move away from what they feel and believe, especially when it is to do with personal and sensitive issues. I found it valuable to ask some of my colleagues, their opinion on creating a change of mind or what might persuade them to change the way they think about something. One of the responses I received was very intriguing. “perception changes when your experience about something changes” (Anon, 2019). This was a very interesting statement as it made me realise just how important it was to create a solution that can allow parents to truly experience and understand what a parenting course such as P.E.T might have to offer. One of the principles of social psychology says that “if we engage in a behaviour, and particularly one that we had not expected that we would have, our thoughts and feelings toward that behaviour are likely to change” (Jhangiani and Terry, 2014). To sway people to engage in a certain kind of behaviour, in this case, approaching parenting courses, salespeople often use the behaviour attitude relationship to persuade people. However, just using the ideology of this relationship may not always be enough. It is proven that to bring about such a successful change; we must use the right kind of communicators, present the right messages and under the right conditions. The image below portrays how a thoughtful attitude change using a good communicator can help to create more elaborate processing of the meaning of that message — making it more effective and likely successful.
Therefore, the approach that these authors suggest is to get people to move slowly in your desired direction, such that they can commit to a small part of the act. Ideally, it would be easier to get people to commit to a smaller act prior, which then may affect their perceptions of this act, making it more likely for them to engage in costlier behaviour later (Jhangiani and Terry, 2014). To show this argument more clearly, here is an example from the “foot-in-the-door-technique presented in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (Fraser and freedman, 1996). In an experiment conducted, homeowners were asked if they were willing to place small stickers in the windows of their house saying, “be a safe driver” to which many of these agreed. Several weeks later when the researchers returned and asked the same people if they were willing to put up a big ugly sign that read “drive safely” in their lawns, 80% of those people agreed as compared to only 20% who hadn’t taken part in the small act first. Although this example of behaviour change may not completely apply to P.E.T, there are elements of the psychological principles that can be used to influence peoples understanding of parenting courses.
COMBINING DESIGN WITH PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES?
Following on Dr Jhangiani and Dr Tarry’s theory of slowly introducing people to the desired direction to get them to change their perception, I believe that the P.E.T introducing certain planned strategies can help their target market. Here are a few things the organisation may adopt.
- Creating stronger communities between its existing customers to promote a positive feeling towards the organisation
- Initiate the idea of ‘bite-sized’ versions of the P.E.T course to introduce parents to what they may learn from attending P.E.T
- Conduct ‘small-scale’ open-door workshops that promote parenting classes
- Create a ‘community of practice’
- Consider a change in the name of “Parent Effectiveness Training”
Design is an outcome, as well as an activity. The outcome can be seen in the products and services that we engage with, while the activity is the user-centred design process. Both need to be managed to ensure the desired outcome is achieved (Best, 2018). After reading and understanding the key theories about design management from Kathryn Best’s book, I believe that project success must align with and satisfy the organisation, its values, brand mission and the target customers. Therefore, I believe that it is important to suggest solutions that P.E.T may be able to design and undertake. The solutions mentioned above are simple but may be able to allow P.E.T to take those small steps and create an impact.
By designing stronger communities between P.E.T and its customers, the organisation can enhance its customer relationships, which is an important aspect of the business model that we proposed. This can be achieved by creating an online forum/community through its website that encourages testimonials, feedback, questions and conversations between parents.
The idea was developed when I heard many participants of this course mention the lack of post-course communication and community feeling within the P.E.T. By creating this platform, P.E.T allows its participants to feel a sense of belonging towards the organisation which may increase brand loyalty. As a part of our design prototyping, we were also able to create a mock-up of the proposed forum.
The idea of creating a bite-size course was once again a result of an insight gained from an interviewee. Through conversation, I realised that providing an 8-week long course with a lot of intensive content for a target market that is afraid to look up to such an organisation, can be even more daunting. My interviewee suggested that it was difficult for them initially to be able
to commit to such a long course they knew nothing about. I believe that by introducing such a workshop, P.E.T can organise and deliver its essential content without having to scare customers from the idea of commitment.
Communities of practise have existed for years within organisations. It is a term coined by Lave and Wenger in 1991. They bring together people that share ideas or concerns in the same areas. They are not teams, but a group of professionals that are informally bound to a common class of problems and pursuit of solutions and learn from each other’s’ experience (Hajric, 2010). The communities help foster environments in which knowledge and can be created and shared, and most importantly, used to improve efficiency, effectiveness and innovation (Swan, Scarbrough and Robertson, 2002). Although they are a slow and difficult process, they are said to have a big impact and rapidly increase an organisations success — they can help create a sense of belonging and community within P.E.T instructors and its participants. They are also useful to turn a weakness into a strength. For P.E.T, a community of practice can be a group of parents that may have already been onto the course or even parents who support the idea of parenting courses and form a community to work together to promote parenting courses and eliminate the underlying stigma. By doing so — they may be able to create a positive community that invites parents to participate in understanding the benefit of a parenting course.
The final solution for this design strategy is developed from the idea of parents fearing a ‘course’ and thus not wanting to interact with something like “Parent Effectiveness Training”. As I discussed, parents usually associate a course with a kind of coaching that may be judgmental or look down upon their style of parenting. The very fact that P.E.T contains the word “effectiveness” may suggest to a parent that their parenting technique is not effective enough, for which they require a class. Although changing the name of the course may be a challenge and could come with its downsides, it is worthwhile to consider how it may affect the target audience, in the long run.
As a conclusion to this project, I believe that my group was able to tackle the brief relatively well. We have been able to demonstrate; an understanding of design management using business analysis tools in our presentation and develop design strategies that could benefit the organisation. On the contrary, I would have liked to be able to conduct more in-depth research to understand and test what would realistically persuade parents to change their attitude towards parenting courses to reflect that within this report. It would have also been beneficial to prototype an open-door workshop within my university’s local area to test how much of an impact it would make as a design solution. Nonetheless, it has been a challenging but constructive project that has helped me learn the strategic tools of design within and an organisation.
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References:
Websites
Bennett, B. (2014). Should all parents be required to attend a parenting course before they can claim child benefit?. [Blog] Adams Cloud. Available at: https://www.adamscloud.com/should-all-parents-be-required-to-attend-a-parenting-course-before-they-can-claim-child-benefit/ [Accessed 28 Dec. 2019].
COURSE | meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary.
Eşanu, E. (2018). Designing Perceptions Instead of Solutions. [online] Medium. Available at: https://uxplanet.org/designing-perspectives-instead-of-solutions-6afb4b03c1a5 [Accessed 25 Jan. 2020].
Gentleman, A. (2012). Do we need parenting classes?. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/mar/31/do-we-need-parenting-classes [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].
Gonçalves, L. (2019). Communities of Practice: Everything You Need To Know. [online] Organisational Mastery. Available at: https://www.organisationalmastery.com/communities-of-practice/ [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].
Gordontraining.com. (2016). Parent Effectiveness Training (P.E.T.) — Gordon Training International. [online] Available at: https://www.gordontraining.com/parent-programs/parent-effectiveness-training-p-e-t/ [Accessed 20 Jan. 2020].
Hajric, E. (2010). Communities of Practice. [online] Knowledge-management-tools.net. Available at: http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/communities-of-practice.html [Accessed 24 Jan. 2020].
Martinovich, M. (2017). Change behaviors by changing perception of normal | Stanford News. [online] Stanford News. Available at: https://news.stanford.edu/2017/10/06/change-behaviors-changing-perception-normal/ [Accessed 22 Jan. 2020].
Mead, Sarah. ‘6 Compelling Reasons to Take Parenting Classes’. Available at https://www.whitbyschool.org/passionforlearning/6-compelling-reasons-to-take-parenting-classes (Accessed 08/01/2020)
M., G. (2011). Why do ‘good enough’ parents need parenting classes?. [Blog] netmums. Available at: https://www.netmums.com/coffeehouse/being-mum-794/children-4-11-years-60/521799-why-do-good-enough-parents-need-parenting-classes.html [Accessed 8 Jan. 2020].
Smith, N. (2016). removing the stigma from parenting classes. [Blog] Parentkind. Available at: https://www.parentkind.org.uk/blog/8313/Removing-the-stigma-from-parenting-classes [Accessed 24 Dec. 2019].
Spock, B. (n.d.). Dr. Spock: How You Learn to Be a Parent. [Blog] Parents. Available at: https://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/advice/dr-spock-how-you-learn-to-be-a-parent/ [Accessed 22 Jan. 2020].
The Guardian. (2012). Parenting classes are a good idea. But families need so much more | Observer editorial. [online] Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/may/20/editorial-cameron-childcare-plans-welcome [Accessed 23 Jan. 2020].
Webber, E. (2016). Communities of Practice: The Missing Piece of Your Agile Organisation. [online] InfoQ. Available at: https://www.infoq.com/articles/communities-of-practice-agile-organisation/ [Accessed 26 Jan. 2020].
Journal Articles
Fraser, S. and freedman, J. (1996). Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the-door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, [online] 4(2). Available at: http://www.bulidomics.com/w/images/6/6c/Freedman_fraser_footinthedoor_jpsp1966.pdf [Accessed 16 Jan. 2020].
Swan, J., Scarbrough, H. and Robertson, M. (2002). The Construction of `Communities of Practice’ in the Management of Innovation. Management Learning, [online] 33(4), pp.477–496. Available at:
Books
Best, K. (2018). The fundamentals of design management. Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA.
Best, K. (2006). DESIGN MANAGEMENT. 2nd ed. [S.l.]: BLOOMSBURY VISUAL ARTS.
Gordon, T. (1975). What every parent should know.
Jhangiani, R. and Terry, H. (2014). The Principles of Social Psychology. 1st ed. British Columbia.
Perry, P. (n.d.). The book you wish your parents had read.
Phillips, P. (2004). Creating a perfect design brief. New York: Allworth Press.
Images
Jhangiani, R. and Terry, H. (2014). Spontaneous Attitude change. [image] Available at: https://opentextbc.ca/socialpsychology/chapter/changing-attitudes-through-persuasion/ [Accessed 22 Jan. 2020].
Rajani J., Cheng D., and Yardi T. (2019). Prototype of online forum. [image] Available at: https://jrajani26.wixsite.com/p-e-t
Rajani J., Cheng D., and Yardi T. (2019). Customer relationships in proposed business model. [image].
Referenced Interviews
Lopez, D. (2020). A brief discussion on how people view parenting courses. Interview by Yardi T.
Anon. (2019). What is your idea behind creating persuasion?. Interview by Yardi T.
