is an e-reader tablet app for parents who want to read aloud to their young children
Context
TinyTales is part of a design challenge created by BiteSizeUX to give emerging UX designers experience in conducting design sprints. They provide the premise and short interviews with users where parents who use TinyTales discuss challenges with the app.
I conducted a modified solo version of the Google Ventures Design Sprint to create and test an innovative and intuitive solution to the TinyTales problem.
Project Constraints
1 week to complete project
Sole designer
Design Constraints
Design as an app for tablet
Design for parents to read stories to their children
TinyTales’ inventory of stories are written by contributing authors
Stories are discovered and read in app - no hard copies
Problem
Parents have expressed that it is difficult and time consuming to find a story to read to their children
Goal
Make it easier for parents to find a great story to read to their children
A Social Solution
I ultimately decided to test an e-reader with a social feature, where parents could reccomend books to each other. Research showed that parents tend to find and buy new books through reccomendations from their friends and family. I wanted to try to translate that concept to a digital platform. I created an app where people you know and trust could easily reccommend books through direct messages. I hoped that this would make the process of searching for a story to read easier.
View Prototype in seperate browser
Prescribed Process
For the modified solo Google Ventures Design Sprint I was given 5 days to review the research, ideate, design and test a prototype. The tasks were broken into days to create a workable timeline.
Day 1 - Mapping
Discovering lacking discoverability
On day 1, I began “Mapping”. I reviewed the material provided by BiteSizeUX, which consisted of a statement of what TinyTales was, research and a Persona.
Research
Notes from interviews with eleven different parents about their experiences with TinyTales.
A recorded interview with Samantha, a parent who loves reading to her three young children.
Critical Pain Point
Parents found that searching for an appropriate story in TinyTales was difficult and took too long.
Tiny Tales currently has a plethora of stories to choose from, yet no organizational system to help parents find the right story for them. Parents who read to their children are looking for different things from the experience. But all are hoping to be able to find a book that suits their specific needs. Parents want to spend more time reading and less time searching.
The other takeaways from the research
Parents mainly read to their children before bedtime.
Parents wanted to gauge a book's reading time before committing to it.
Parents wanted to find books that were age appropriate.
Parents wanted to find books that were relevant to their child’s current experiences.
Parents wanted to find books that shared their values.
I also noted that parents mentioned the importance of recommendations and finding books their family and friends enjoy.
"I talk to my friends who have children that are the same age as my sons... We usually trade recommendations and it works out great. Plus, our kids can talk about their favorite stories together on playdates!"
- Anthony (Father of David, 7 years old and Justin, 5 years old)
"My sister sent me all of her kid's old books! We usually pick from those or I call her and ask about some good new books or stories about a certain topic my daughter is interested in...”
- Taylor (Mother of Jane, 4 years old)
Claire recommends a story
From this research a persona was created,“Claire.” She is 34 years old and mother to James and Kayla, 6 and 4 years old. Claire embodies the main characteristics of the parents who use TinyTales. With a persona in mind I could begin asking questions that could eventually lead to solutions.
How Might We . . .
Create a product that allows users to easily and intuitively find a book they want to read?
Maintain the social aspects of reading to your children?
Before the day was over I created a map of the end to end experience Claire might have from opening to closing TinyTales, to try to understand what a user journey could look like.
Steps:
Decide it's storytime
Open TinyTales app
Find a book
Read the Book
Recommend and Review the story
Close the App
Day 2 - Sketching
Lightning Demo
Day 2 was designated for ideating and sketching. It began with a “Lightning Demo”, looking to competitors and other apps that have solved similar problems to help inspire me or at least help me discern a path.
I looked at e-readers for adults and children, as well as social apps and apps with great search functions and took notes on the aspects that I thought would be useful for TinyTales.
Amazon Kindle (e-reader for adults)
Epic! (e-reader for children)
Tales2go (e-reader for children)
Instagram (social app)
Spotify (media app)
Useful Features and Takeaways:
A library of favorites
Browse section with filters
Posting and sharing content among other users/ followers/ friends
Tagging and messaging
Visual design with children in mind
Having a homepage with suggested books
Creating a list of books
Personalizing accounts for age and interests
Having a creative explore feature
Collaborative playlists allowing users to share and create lists together
Crazy 8’s
Next I used the Crazy 8’s sketching exercise to quickly ideate a solution using the insight I gained from the Lightning Demo. I chose to focus on finding a book as a “critical screen” because it is the main pain point experienced by users. Sketching out this idea led me to realize that multiple screens in the app would focus on this aspect.
Ideas:
An extensive search function, with filters by topics, reading times and age suggestions.
A homepage where you could look at suggested books based on an algorithm.
A personalized profile to make sure suggestions are age appropriate and to choose interests.
But what stood out as most important was the social aspect.
I decided it would be interesting to focus on creating a way for users to share books and make recommendations to their friends and other parents within the e-reader.
What could a recommendation feature look like?
After the Crazy 8’s challenge I decided to sketch the interaction a user would have after they finished reading a story they like, and how they could recommend that story to a peer or friend. I wanted the recommendation feature to be the focal point of TinyTales.
I created a three panel sketch to begin storyboarding the user journey.
I drew the page that would appear after reading a book and had a section of the page dedicated to recommendations.
Assuming a user would decide to recommend the book to a friend, I created a clear and simple concept of what recommending a book would look like.
I chose to use a messages feature to view the recommendations, so that you could keep track of who you sent books to and so that you could write a message with the recommendation to explain what you liked about it or why you recommend it.
Day 3 - Deciding
Story Boarding
On day 3 I continued sketching and storyboarding. I created a hand drawn wireframe to figure out what a prototype could look like. I continued to focus on the social nature of TinyTales.
I mapped out the journey of a parent:
Receiving a friend request and book recommendation from a friend.
Reading and recommending the book to a different friend.
I included a rating option so that users could see what their friends think of a book, which can help with choosing material that your child will like.
I also sketched out some other related screens that would help with searching for books.
A homepage with algorithmic recommendations and friend favorites
A personal library with saved and favorite books
An intuitive search section in order to make finding a book easy when not utilizing the social network within the app.
I also created the “My Library” screen to show that users create a profile for themselves which will allow tiny tales to recommend age appropriate books and focus on your personal interests.
I believed that direct message recommendations would intuitively help parents find appropriate books because it mimicks real life.
Day 4 - Prototyping
Creating a clickable way to test social e-stories
By day 4 I was ready to begin prototyping. The goal of the design sprint was to find out if my solution to the pain points discovered in the research phase were worth exploring further. To do this I needed to quickly create a minimum viable prototype that was realistic enough to be tested with users.
With Figma I created high fidelity designs using my sketched out storyboard as a rudimentary wireframe. And turned those designs into a very basic clickable prototype that users could test and experience TinyTales while giving valuable feedback.
I figured that the color scheme should be playful but presented in dark mode, as the app would be used mostly around bedtime, and that icons and imagery should be large and fun as children would be using it alongside their parents.
Day 5 - Testing
Testing, discovery and more iterating
I recruited and tested the prototype with five different participants, all of whom were parents of children aged 3-8 who frequently read picture books to their children. View First iteration prototype
I created a test script to make sure the user tests were consistent.
Testing Goals
I wanted to test how people felt about the social aspect of TinyTales.
I wanted to make sure that finding a book seemed easy and intuitive.
I wanted to test if parents would use the reccomendation feature.
My Library Page
I decided that I wanted to make it very clear from the start of testing that the app had a social aspect. I changed the page the app opened to from the home page to the “My Library” page and put the “friend’s favorite books” at the top of the page to make it clear that the app allowed users to share books with friends.
Testing Hiccups and Iterations
There was not enough initial context.
After the first usability test I realized I had not given enough context to the prototype. For the following tests I explained more about what the app was and how the prototype worked. I made sure to mention that the prototype has a fake profile already created and that the app was meant to be used by parents alongside their children.
The app appeared to be meant for children to use on their own.
This made parents uncomfortable to have children sending friend requests and rating stories. Receiving a friend request from a stranger was concerning to parents.
Receiving a friend request from a hypothetical friend made the test subjects uneasy.
I decided receiving a message from someone you are already friends with made more sense in testing the concept of sending and receiving book recommendations.
View Second iteration prototype
The last two participants clicked to see the message without hesitation and decided to check out the book recommendation when it was coming from someone they thought they already knew.
What I learned
Testing Insights:
All of the participants were very excited about being able to receive recommendations and recommend books to friends.
4 out of 5 of the participants liked the social nature of the app as long as parents were using it alongside their children.
They all mentioned that friend recommendations was one of the most common ways they decide what books to buy for their children, and liked the idea of being able to send recommendations through a reading app.
4 out of 5 participants felt the messaging feature was unnecessary and would prefer a different way of viewing/sending recommendations
“I think the concept is great, I would definitely sign up for it”
- Mika, mother of 4 year old
“I like the idea of an easy way to share what you’re reading with each other … make[ing] reading kind of a communal social activity”
- Amilee, mother of 4 and 8 year old
“[Tinytales] mimics real life… a lot of the stuff we end up reading... are either books other people have bought for us, recommendations … or stuff we know [friends] are reading”
- Julie, mother of 3 year old
Increasing Clarity and Removing DM’s
A possible future for TinyTales
Overall the concept of recommending books was very well received, parents liked the idea of bringing their community into family reading time. But there were things about the TinyTales prototype that could improve the user experience given the time to fix them.
Testing showed confusion around the messaging feature.
Parents found direct messaging to be an overly complicated way of sharing books.
Solution:
I believe creating a “friends recommendation” section in the “My Library” page where users can see all the books recommended to them as well as books they recommended to friends would be a good alternative to using the messaging function.
Parents were unsure if TinyTales was meant for their children to use alone, or to be used together.
There was also some hesitation around friend requests and safety as well as ambiguity about the target user of the app.
Solution:
I think a clear onboarding section where friend requests come from parents contacts via email or another chosen source, as well as possibly creating a parents dashboard would help to make it clear who the target user is and alleviate pressure about safety. Also encouraging users to add photos of the family as a profile photo instead of using children's photos, and using family names, could also put parents at ease.
UI Redesign
After the Design Sprint had concluded I went back to my HiFi mockups and updated the visuals to create cleaner and calmer graphics. View Redesign
I emphasised that TinyTales was primarily for reading bedtime stories to children
I redesigned a few screens and added a blue light filter.
I designed a search page for future testing.
I played around with what a daytime theme could look like.
Switching from dark to light mode in the settings.
Final Thoughts
A recommendation feature is an innovative solution to reducing search time and would set TinyTales apart from its competitors. It is a great way to limit the search times of parents finding books to read on TinyTales.
Conducting a design sprint allowed me to test my hypothesis and solutions to the TinyTales problem and see if they were viable in a fast and effective way. It gave me valuable insight into what aspects of my designs worked and what needed improvement.
I really enjoyed working on this project and am excited to conduct more design sprints in the future to efficiently test new design ideas.
