Context:
TinyTales is a fictional company created specifically to facilitate a design sprint.
April 22, 2024 - April 26, 2024 (5 days)
Duration:
Role:
Solo designer
Tools:
BACKGROUND
TinyTales is a startup where authors and illustrators can publish children’s stories for parents to read to their children - short stories, educational and more
THE PROBLEM
As the library of books and short stories has grown, parents have expressed it’s been difficult and time-consuming to find the right stories to read to their children
Users have stated that finding books that fit their children’s requests or provide their child with some relevant knowledge can be quite hard with the extensive library that TinyTales offers. Often times Parents spend more time trying to find a book than they do reading to their child. This can be quite disheartening to the parent who has to put in the effort, and to the child who wants to be read a fun story before bedtime.
DESIGN PROCESS
Google Venture Design Sprint
Day 1
Understand
Day 2
Sketch
Day 3
Decide
Day 4
Prototype
Day 6
Test
DAY 1: UNDERSTAND
Day 1 began with familiarizing myself with the goals of the start up, Who exactly would be using their product, and the problem they are attempting to solve. Here is what I found:
TinyTales aims to provide easy access to a library of children’s books.
Their users are anyone who has children or read to children.
Their current problem is figuring out how to reduce the amount of time users spend searching for books.
Armed with a basics, I poured through the research conducted by TinyTales prior to me taking on this project.
One essential question asked during the research phase was:
“Tell us about how you choose a book or story to read to your children”
The responses were varied and insightful and helped me converge on the most pressing issues parents face when choosing a book. through common themes found in the responses, I was able to categorize the responses and move closer to possible solutions.
Insights
Relevance
Parents want the stories they choose to provide some educational value, or at the very least be relevant to child’s day-today experiences.
Book-length
Being aware of how long it would take to read a book from front to end would help parents plan their reading sessions.
Reading comprehension
Parents want to know what the appropriate age level of a book is so their child is not lost or bored when it comes to content and topics.
Map
With a strong understanding of the users’ needs and problems, and a better picture of how I can help users meet those needs and solve their problems, I needed a way to prepare before creating sketches of my initial designs. For this reason, I created a map. It helped me keep track of how I wanted the users’ end-to-end experience to be. I created multiple iterations of the journey map but eventually settled on one that would make the searching experience simple yet effective.
DAY 2: SKETCH
On day 2 I focused on generating ideas by sketching possible solutions. To facilitate this thinking, I participated in lightning demos, crazy 8s, and finally creating solution sketches.
Lightning Demos
I Started the second day by products that attempted to solve similar problems to that of TinyTales. I looked at the most popular websites that offered a collection of children’s books and how they expected users to navigate through the pages to find what they were looking for. This helped me understand why these websites were popular among users and how I could translate those features to fit this project.
Amazon features kids books like it does the rest of it’s products. It provides users detailed filters and categories. The kids section for books also allows to find products based on the age range of the child, which I have found to be a recurring feature in most platforms.
While not directly related to the goals of TinyTales, I found it interesting how Youtube Kids allows for personalization of content based on age. I also drew inspiration from its’ simplistic approach to the UI, especially considering how different it looks from the mainline youtube platform.
I liked how Scholastic gave users the ability to filter books by age or by grade. I thought it provided more freedom to explore books based on education level and reading comprehension, as well as allowing new users to explore books that other children in the same grade as the users’ children might like to read.
Sketches
Taking inspiration from products I studied in the lightning demos, I took the time to make eight sketches of possible solutions. This eight-minute process helped me organize my ideas in a visual manner, creating a blueprint for how I would move forward. Out of the eight sketches, I chose one that would allow users to set their filters quickly without too many distractions on the screen.
The Design I moved forward with
Having selected my initial design, I expanded on it to showcase my solution sketches:
The page users are met with when they first begin search
With the age range and category selected, users will find relevant results
Information page of a selected book along with suggestions for similar books.
DAY 3: DECIDE
Since I was the only participant in this design sprint, I moved forward with my sketches. I chose my designs based on the research provided. Users stressed that they wanted to plan their reading time, have their children learn something, and find books relevant to their children’s experiences. With this in mind, I wanted to deliver these features in a way that was similar to the minimalist approach of YouTube Kids, to keep the user focused during “storytime”. To showcase my thought process and as a way to create a very basic prototype, I used day 3 to construct a storyboard.
The process of selecting an age range and category that gives users a curated list of books based on their preferences.
Once users found a book they like, they can read information about its length, reading level, views, topics the book will cover, and the plot.
Users can also read the book with an in-app reader and also save books for later reading
DAY 4: PROTOTYPE
With a good understanding of the the users’ needs, and how I would attempt to meet them, I began day 4 by creating a low-fidelity prototype in Figma. By creating a prototype, I would be able to test the feature in a usability study that was planned for day 5. The goal of this prototype was to see if users could make sense of the flow and whether the prototype could help users narrow down the books they read to their children.
The process of selecting an age range and category that gives users a curated list of books based on their preferences.
Once users found a book they like, they can read information about its length, reading level, views, topics the book will cover, and the plot.
Users can also read the book with an in-app reader and also save books for later reading
DAY 5: TEST
For the final day of the design sprint, I conducted a usability study with 5 participants. To gauge how well the features met the users’ needs, they were asked to find books based on their own children’s age group and choose a book that their children would enjoy. The usability study was very informative to me. It revealed pain points that hindered the participants’ progress and provided me with insights that I could not have found on my own.
Key Takeaways
Search vs Find Book
Users were confused as to why there was a “search” button and a “find book”. This led to some confusion as to which button would lead to the next page.
Recommendations
Participants said they often looked at books that were popular among their children’s age group to decide what to read to their children.
Reading duration
multiple participants mentioned they liked that they could see the reading time for each book on the information page. However, they found it odd the same information was not available while on the reader screen.
Results Page
“I want to be able to see the results change when I choose a new age group or category”
Search Experience
Users found that having age groups allowed them to choose books their children could appreciate. They also found the tags useful to find books their children could relate to.
POST USABILITY STUDY
Having completed the usability study, I quickly poured through all the insights and feedback I gained from the participants. Considering the time constraints of this design sprint, I had to decide which changes were critical to solving the users’ pain points. I spent the rest of day 5 redesigning certain elements, and in some cases, entire screens. I decided to stick with low-fidelity designs to make the process quick.
Below are the changes I made on the final day:
Users can now see recommendations, most read and top selects
Users can track how much of the book they have read so they find unread books at a glance.
By adding a progress bar to the reader, users should be able to track how much of the book they read so they can resume at a later time.
NEXT STEPS
The future of this project, to me, is clear. conducting the usability study revealed some interesting ideas that I had not considered. Before moving on to high-fidelity mockups, I would make changes to how the tags are showcased. While participants mentioned they liked the inclusion of tags, I do believe that users would benefit from knowing what topics are covered in a book before visiting the information page.
I would also like to interview more users to find out if there was a way to further improve the search experience that was unlike the ones I had observed during lightning demos.
I hope to work on this project further by creating high-fidelity mockups as well as conducting a few rounds of usability testing to further improve the user experience.