The Problem
Users (parents) usually take lots of time to find the perfect books to read to their young children
The Solution
I did a modified design sprint for this project, and our goal is to make it easier, and less time consuming for parents to find books and stories to read to their children
My Role
As a solo designer on this project, previous research and user insights are provided to me, and I am only responsible for ideation, prototyping, and testing.
Constraints
-
The solution should be designed as an iPad or tablet app
-
TinyTales already has an inventory of stories written by contributing authors, we should focus on how parents chose to read.
-
The stories are discovered and read in the app -parents are not ordering hard copies, printing out stories, or reading on another device/app
Tools
Adobe XD, Miro, pen, and paper
Day 1 Understanding the Problem/Mapping
For this project, TinyTales has provided us with user research, interview, and persona. This helps us greatly to speed up the process to understand the problems our users are facing. For the design sprint, day one's goal is to come up with an end-to-end mapping to determine the critical area that we should work on providing the solution.
Research Highlights
Maria
two children, age 5 & 7
She likes to pre-read a few pages to ensure it is the right age level after her children pick a book.
Dan
two children, age 4 & 6
He likes to scan the length of a book to see if they can finish it soon or spend a few nights finishing it after his children pick the book
Anthony
two children, age 5 & 7
He asked a friend who has children of similar ages to recommend. It works great as children can talk about favorites stories on play dates
Lindsy
one child, age 7
Let her daughter pick what specific topic she likes. It is challenging when she changes her interests often “Yesterday, she told me she wants to read about giraffes - we had to do a lot of searching to find a good story!”
Silvia
one child, age 6
She brought lots of books online to read to her kid. She looks for parents’ online reviews who have similar ages as hers
Sara
one child, age 4
Sara’s son picks a book based on the book cover, then she will flip through it to see if it is the right age level and how long it is
Click to read more research highlights and interview notes
Persona
After carefully reviewing the user research and understanding the users' pain points, I ask the HMW (How Might We) questions to open more possibilities for ideation. Then I work on creating an end-to-end mapping our users will likely go through. Realizing the decision-making is happening during the review results step, I decided to optimize this step as a starting point.
HMW (How Might We)
-
Help parents take less time searching for books they want?
-
Make it easier to find books that are age-appropriate for the kids?
-
Help parents to discover good books they or their kids may be interested in?
-
Help parents to review the educational value of the books?
End-to-end mapping
Day 2 Sketching Solution
Day 2's goal is to start sketching solutions. Before jumping into the sketches, I looked at products for inspiratio.
Get Inspired (Lighting Demo)
Sketch Possible Solutions (Crazy 8)
I did a crazy-8 sketch of the most critical screen (chose books), and I selected a solution sketch that is more promising to help parents quickly find the perfect book to read to their kids. Based on the screen I picked, I made a more detail version and also added a before and an after screen to it.
Crazy-8 sketch
Filter selections
list of the search results
open the book
(start reading)
Going back to the sketches I did earlier, I think I may combine some of the features (list view/cover view), and upvote ratings (thumb up with a percentage).
Then I did some quick sketches for the possible interactions/functions. Starting with the home screen, the important elements that led to the following interactions are the search bar and the bottom navigation. The search bar is essential to help the users to find the books they want, which also includes some filter options that are important to the parents (ie. age range, grade level, book-length, and book type).
As user select their preference in the filter, they can start searching the keywords that are interesting and reviewing the results in either the list view or cover view. When the users find out something interested, they can add it to the reading list, and look into more details by clicking the book cover. A dialog will show up with details of the book (complete summary and highlights like educational values, top reading list..etc)
Parents can choose to read it now or save it for later. If they decide to read it now, it will bring up the whole screen as a flipbook. Parents’ guide under the book indicates a good educational point. Finally, as they finish the book, they can upvote/downvote the book, and provide a comment/review if they want.
Day 3 Create A Storyboard
Day 4 Built A Prototype
I built the prototype in Adobe XD. The reason to use XD is to test out the application. I found by connecting my prototype to my iPad, I can review the prototype on the device directly. However, it is not easy to access multiple flows quickly as in Figma, and any interaction change is not automatically updated to the test link. For this step, I am not trying to make a perfect solution at this point but to test it to see if there are any functions/features are not work as intended.
Low-fidelity prototype
Hi-fidelity prototype
Day 5 Testing
We are conducting usability tests for the prototype to see if the current prototype works as intended. We want to identify potential usability problems through this process, and more importantly, we want to see if the current flow of the app creates any confusion for the users.
We have recruited five parents from the Facebook parents group to participate in our moderated usability tests via zoom.
Main Findings
-
UI needs to be more colorful and attractive to kids (5/5)
-
Age and grade sections are redundant (3/5)
-
More Choices under book type/categories (3/5)
-
The heart icon is confusing, and it is not obvious to act as a bookmark/or save for later (3/5)
Solutions
-
Improve UI to make it more attractive to kids
-
Remove the grade sections
-
Add more choices under book type/categories
-
Replace the heart icon or add text
TinyTales Prototype