TinyTales
Things to consider:
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The main purpose of this project is to help parents to find authors, books, and series stories to read to their kids. It contains short stories and children’s books by authors and illustrators.
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Sometimes it’s difficult and time-consuming to find stories.
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The design is intended for iPad or tablet.
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Focus on how parents and children choose stories to read.
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The stories are read in the app.
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The goal is to make it easier and less laborious for parents to find books and stories to read to their children.
Problem
As they've grown their library of stories, parents have expressed that it's been difficult and time-consuming to find the right stories to read to their children.
Solution
To create a digital library that makes it easier and less laborious for parents to find books and stories to read to their children.
Tools
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Adobe Illustrator
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Adobe XD
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Google Docs
My Role
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UX researcher
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Illustrator
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UI designer
Timeline
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Overall: 5 Days
Design Process
Interview
The interview was conducted with a mom of three kids (one, six and nine years old). The older ones are avid readers. These are some insights from the interview:
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How often do they read? They read most nights: school nights five times a week.
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Why at night? She likes to practice reading time with her child. She chooses the story.
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She categorizes his books depending on the mood of the day. She picks books that inspire them.
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Sometimes they read 3 books at night.
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Sometimes the kids request books.
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Mom gives them options.
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How do you find the books? School recommendations, and Scholastic book orders.
Feels
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I can take a while to find a book to read with my kid and it can be frustrating at times.
- I love satisfying my daughter's curiosity, but it takes a long time to find books.
Does
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I pre-read for my kids to find out if they like the topic of the book.
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I usually ask my friends for recommendations.
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I check for reviews first.
Pains
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I take to long trying to find a book to read
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Normally I don't want to read and I do, the kids probably don't like it.
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The process of searching, finding, selecting is too long.
Gains
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I spend time with my kids.
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I love satisfying their curiosity.
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Encourage love for books and literature.
Says
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I like books to have an educational value.
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I want books that have stories relevant to my son's experiences.
Thinks
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If my kid chooses the book, there's more chance to enjoy reading time.
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I need books that will be approppiate, and in a pleasant medium, for my seven and four-year-old.
Primary persona
Monica, Mom
"HOW MIGHT WE" Questions
After gathering all the insights and information, and understanding the potential user, I drew the HMW questions that would later give me the tools to create the user flows.
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How might we give parents multiple options to find the perfect book for their child?
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How might we categorize books and sort them in ways that allow parents and children to choose them well and quickly?
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How might we inspire children’s interest in searching for books?
Competitive Analysis
When researching the competitors, I wanted to find and understand products that are kid friendly, fun, and at the same time useful and easy to navigate, focusing on specific aspects that I knew I wanted to incorporate in my design.
Crazy 8's
With this core Design Sprint method, I gave myself eight minutes to gather all the ideas I could come up and push beyond my first idea.
Solution Sketch
After the Crazy 8's exercise, I decided on three screens: One that comes before the critical screen, (2) the critical screen itself, and (3) the screen that comes after the critical screen. This solution should show how the user interacts with an interface.
Taking the thoughts and comments from day one into consideration, I took as a reference the navigation through categories of Netflix, considering the categories that could be explored.
Like Netflix, or any educational product, I think it’s important to give the user several options of material, screen after screen, according to their needs. That way they can have other titles in mind the next time they sit with their child.
Sprint Day 4: Prototype
High fidelity prototype of the screens I sketched on Day 3 of the Design Sprint
Sprint Day 5: Test
Usability Testing
In general, participants went through the prototype smoothly and there was a positive reaction to the product, however there were some questions about specific sections, where they gave their preferred action.
The participants involved vary from being parents with small children, who either use digital libraries with their kids or read physical books with them, to participants, who are not parents, but keep a digital library on their tablets.
Learnings
A Design Sprint presents the fantastic challenge of working in an agile environment. It was a great opportunity to experience a new process. There were some interesting takeaways from this.
Learning to condense my thoughts within five days is really a great way to exercise the brain, as it requires me to find solutions in a relatively short time frame.
Thank you for reading my case study!
Want to work with me? Feel free to contact me! ...or just say hello on my social media.
Helping parents find great books and stories to read to their young children.
TinyTales is a startup where authors and illustrators can publish children's stories to help parents and kids find the perfect book.
This project is a modified Google Design Sprint, in which 5 days were required to create the project from research to usability testing*.
*All basic information was provided by the startup.
Sprint Day 1: Map
Sprint Day 2: Sketch
Khan Academy Kids
Login / home screen
Lingo Kids
Has a separate section for parents / Home screen
Netflix
Category organization/ "More like this" "Trailers & more"