Tiny Tales is an iOS Ipad app that helps parents of young children to sift through hundreds of stories and find the right one in minutes.
Timeline: GV Design Sprint over one week: August 17-22, 2023
My Role: UI/UX Design / Solo Bootcamp Project
Tools Used: Pen and paper, Zoom, Figma
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This project stemmed from a creative bootcamp design brief. I was provided with user research on an existing app called Tiny Tales. The research consisted of user interviews, user feedback of the app, and a persona. With this information, I was able to understand the users’ needs before beginning to work on a possible solution.
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Problem
It is difficult and time consuming for parents to find the right stories to read to their children from the Tiny Tales app.
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Solution
Cut down on the time it takes to find an appropriate story by using a quiz that filters out exactly the stories the parents are looking for.
Day 1: Research and Mapping
The research that was provided included user interviews, user feedback of the current Tiny Tales app, and a persona describing the user’s needs, desires, and struggles.
This information provided me with the foundation to begin solving for the problem that the user was facing.
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After taking notes from the videos and slides that were provided, I highlighted the notes that gave me information on what the users are currently doing in order to find the right story. This, along with the knowledge that users are not happy with the current process, allowed me to understand the problem that needed to be solved.
Due to the short timeframe of this project, I did not sort the notes into an affinity map, but rather relied on my highlighted notes to guide me to the next steps.
After understanding the problem and the user concerns with the current app's design, I drew out possible solutions through mapping. The map I chose to go with gave me the idea to gamify the process with a quiz to find the right story, and I liked that this could potentially make the experience fun for both the parent and child.
Day 2: Lightning Demos and Sketching
Before starting on sketching any designs, I did a round of lightning demos. This helped me see what solutions other successful apps are already using to help their users sort through a large selection of products.
Youtube Playlists gives users a way to view similar themed videos in one playlist.
Blinkist allows listeners to read a short summary to know if they'll be interested in the book.
Amazon categorizes books by age to make it easier to find one that is age appropriate.
Also from Blinkist, this screen groups similar books into collections so users can quickly find a category they're interested in.
After getting inspired by solutions that competitors used, I did a round of crazy 8s to come up with design solutions for Tiny Tales.
And the final step for Day 2 was to turn the sketches from the Crazy 8’s into a plan. I took the sketch that I believed would offer the most simplicity and effectiveness and turned it into a 3-panel storyboard.
Day 3: Storyboarding
I turned the 3 panel storyboard from Day 2 into a 6 panel one. These panels are a walkthrough of the flow that a Tiny Tales user would take to find a story and explore its features.
Day 4: Prototyping
I took my storyboards to Figma and after creating basic wireframe shapes, I searched for stock photos and vectors to make the app look and feel more refined for testing.
Creating a style guide in a span of hours meant that I would choose colors with symbolism and UI elements from a kit. For the font, I chose one that is readable and simple so kids can also read along. I chose purple and orange as the main colors to symbolize creativity and encouragement.
Day 5: Testing
I asked 5 potential users to test my app (both virtually and in person), and each user was a parent who understood the experience of reading to their kids.
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Hi ___! Thanks so much for signing up for my usability test, I really appreciate it! Today I’ll be sharing a prototype of an app called Tiny Tales.
This app is for parents to read stories to their children. There are hundreds of different stories, so today I will be asking you to explore the app as if you were about to read a story to your kids.
And while you’re doing this, please walk me through the steps that you take and feel free to explore everything there is on the screens. If you come across a link or button that doesn’t work just yet, please feel free to let me know what you think should have happened if it were to work.
First, I would like to start by asking you to start using the app to find a story to read to your child today.
Next, please walk me through what you would do after the story is over.
And finally, please take a look at the Account and Library pages, and tell me what you think these pages will allow you to do.
Perfect! Is there anything on these pages that you would expect to see but wasn’t there?
Thank you so much for walking through the design with me! Do you have any final questions, suggestions or feedback?
Thank you again for your time today, ___!
After observing 5 users use the app, I found these issues with the design:
"In Your Library" caused confusion about whether this section contains previously read books, favorites, or recommended books.
Often, users missed the "edit preferences" tab at the top of the recommended stories page; while none of them went to use it, they did see it after landing on the page the second time
Two users asked if writing a review was mandatory or if it could be skipped; one said they don't always find reviews to be helpful
Three users mentioned the font size on the Library and Recommendations pages were a little small to read
Key Learnings and Next Steps:
The next steps would be to iterate on the designs by updating with user feedback from the usability test
The most important takeaway from this design sprint: Parents want to cater to their kids’ unique wants and needs, so it’s important to consider edge cases and take user feedback regarding specific features that would help them have a better experience with the app. These features have the potential to help the majority of users as well, even being edge cases.
If you’d like to hear more about my work, get in touch any time!