Digital Family Experience
Transforming how 1,400+ childcare centers communicate with families
Challenge
KinderCare is the leading childcare provider in the U.S. with 1,400+ learning centers across 39 states. Multiple systems and actors were sending uncoordinated communications to families, creating noise that caused critical information to be missed or ignored. Parents struggled to navigate disconnected touchpoints while center employees lacked clear guidance on communication priorities. No one in the company had a holistic understanding of what communications families received or what triggered them.
Impact
Our initial engagement uncovered systemic communication challenges, evolving into a multi-year strategic partnership. Following the first project, we led three concurrent workstreams in Q2 2022: family communications strategy, authenticated parent portal redesign, and CX measurement framework tracking multiple KPIs. This work gained trust at the highest organizational levels, leading to a retainer model by Q4 2022 with a $2.6 million account and ongoing transformation projects.
Client
KinderCare
Timing
First project: Dec '21 - Feb '22
Second project: Jun '22 - Nov '22
Role
Senior Experience Designer
Contribution
Research, journey mapping, communication strategy, workshop facilitation, UX vision
Core Team
2 Experience Designers, Business Analyst, Program Manager
From One Project to Transformation
What started as evaluating the prospective parent journey revealed systemic communication challenges. This led to an expanded engagement addressing how KinderCare communicates with families across their entire experience.
Understanding the Family Experience
I led research across the inquiry-to-enrollment journey, conducting interviews with prospective parents, center directors, and business stakeholders. Through journey mapping and qualitative analysis, we uncovered critical friction points and identified where communication broke down most significantly.
Friction wasn't isolated to one touchpoint - issues with payments, updates about their child's day, coordinating pickups and dropoffs, managing care supplies, understanding special events - all stemmed from one underlying problem: uncoordinated communication across multiple disconnected systems. No single team owned the family communication experience, and no one had visibility into what families were actually receiving.
Building the communications strategy
Based on research findings, we were engaged to develop a comprehensive family communications strategy to address messy, inconsistent, and laborious communication practices that were out of sync with customer needs and center capacity.
Working with a team of designers and strategists, I guided customer research efforts including 34 interviews with parents, center directors, and subject matter experts, plus on-site visits to understand real-world communication dynamics. I facilitated synthesis workshops and helped frame the strategic priorities that would guide KinderCare's communications transformation.
Strategy framework
We structured strategic opportunities around three core family needs: care, control, and consistency. This framework provided center directors with clear guidance on communication priorities and a roadmap for implementation over the following year and beyond, creating a forward-looking communications strategy that puts the child at the center, aligns KinderCare's communication perception with family trust levels, and guides future efforts across all touch-points.
Expanding the partnership
The communications strategy informed two parallel efforts launched alongside it: a redesigned authenticated parent portal serving as a single point of reference for families, and a CX measurement framework tracking customer experience against operational reality across 47 KPIs. Working across all three workstreams, I helped ensure alignment on communication priorities - whether addressing daily childcare experiences, financial relationships, or measuring effectiveness.
