Tiny Tales

Find The Perfect Story To Read To Your Children

The Product: Tablet Application

Project Duration: Apr 2023- 1 Week

My Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer, UI Designer

TinyTales is a tablet application that brings together a collection of children's stories written by contributing authors and illustrated by talented artists and it provides parents with a curated library of stories, illustrated books, and educational content to read to their children. With Tiny Tales, parents can easily discover and access a wide range of engaging stories, fostering a love for reading and creating cherished moments of storytelling with their little ones.

Problem Statement

The problem that needs to be addressed in this design sprint is the difficulty parents face in finding the right stories to read to their children from the growing library of Tiny Tale. As the library expands, the current process of discovery has become time-consuming and challenging for parents.

In this project, I was responsible to conduct a design sprint and redesign a children's book app using the research findings and user interviews that were provided to me as the basis for the design process.

Affinity Diagram

I conducted an affinity diagram to categorize and organize the results of the user interviews. This helped in identifying patterns, themes, and key insights that were crucial for informing the design process of the app.

Research Insights and pain points

Based on the information that provided and categorizing them, I was able to understand the pain points of our users:

Parents faced difficulties in finding the right story and they thought it's challenging and time-consuming to search for a suitable story from the growing library of Tiny Tale.

This indicates that there is a need for an improved system to help parents in quickly and efficiently discovering stories like having filters.

2. Parents like to read stories for their kids that have educational values or are relevant to new experiences in their kids life.

This indicates that it is very important to have books organized in different categories, themes or genres.

3. Parents had a problem finding a book that is proper for their kids' age. Especially if they had more than one kid finding a book that matches both ages was hard.

This insight highlights the need for a system that takes into account the child's age and recommends stories accordingly.

4. Parents spend time looking at the book before reading to make sure it's not too long or too short.

This indicates that it is important to show the length of the books.

5. Some parents like to read a book based on their reviews.

It's good to show the reviews of each book and also allow parents to make a review after reading the book to their kids.

These insights helped me understand the pain points and requirements of parents searching for children's stories. By addressing these challenges, the app can enhance the user experience, save parents time, and ultimately create an enjoyable and engaging reading experience for both parents and children.

"How might we make it easier and more efficient for parents to find the

perfect children's story to read to their child?"

Map

I draft a possible end-to-end experience a user might have with my product by making a map.

Competitive Analysis

Looking at the competitor products and also applications that were related to the product in some way helped me in the design. I looked through two applications that were directly related ( Epic and Kindle) and two that were not directly related (Airbnb and /spotify) but had some similarities to the app I wanted to design.

Epic

Kindle

Epic: Having the heart icon for adding your favorite books, Different categorized books, Having a filter.

Kindle: Having a search bar, Adding books to your favorite list, Adding books to library, Home page looking, Having a part for mentioning different categories of books.

Spotify

Airbnb

Spotify: How the home page looks, Search page have different categories of songs to choose from, My library page has different songs that we have saved ( this can be used for library of books).

Airbnb: Also has different categories to choose from, You can like each place that you like to have it saved for using later, Each place has a little explanation at the bottom of the image, also there is page named trips that are the trips you have booked ( we can use it for books like the books we have read).

Crazy 8s Method

Based on the map I drew earlier, competitive analysis, and also the pain points I gathered from the research insights I sketched the possible solutions using the Crazy 8s method.

Solution Sketch

I selected the three most critical pages of my sketches and the solution sketch which is kind of like a storyboard and shows how the user interacts with my product, the result of the interaction and what happens next.

Storyboard

Wireframes

Sign up

Homepage

Different categories of books

Filters

Books based on the chosen filters

Information of the book

Different books for the category we chosed.png

Add to your library or your favorites

Your library

Prototyping

User Testing

I tested five different users:

1. Parent of a 4 year old boy

2. Parent of a 7 year old girl

3. A middle school teacher

4. A grandparent of a 6 year old and a 8 year old

5. A librarian who primarily worked with children 5-8 years old

They all navigated through the app very easily and were happy that they had different categories of books to choose from. Also they mentioned filtering based on age and reading level can be very helpful for choosing a proper book for the kids. The category page didn’t have any title and two users mentioned having a title for the page can let them easily understand what to expect from that page. Also three of the users mentioned if the app could benefit from a feature to track reading progress in reading can be very exciting for kids and encourage them to read more books. I already have a feature for getting badges for reading but I will use it as a future development for the app.

Hi- Fidelity Prototyping

Books from the category you chosed (1).png

Different books for the category we chosed (1).jpg

Interactive Prototype

After Thoughts

Here are some potential afterthoughts and features that can be considered to be added later in the application:

1. As users mentioned progress Tracking can be very helpful. Adding a feature that allows parents to track their

child's reading progress and giving the child a badge for each progress to be more encouraged.

2. Parent-Child Interaction: Introduce features that facilitate interaction between parents and children. This could

include discussion questions or activities related to the story that parents can engage in with their kids after

reading.

3. Personalized Recommendations: Implement a recommendation system that analyzes a parent's or child's reading preferences. This can be based on previous stories they've read, genres they prefer, and age-

appropriate content. This way, the app can suggest stories that match their interests.

4. Notification System: Notify parents about new story additions.

5. Accessibility Features: Ensure the app is accessible to children with special needs. This may include text-to-speech options, larger text sizes, or compatibility with screen readers.

Maryam Ghafoori
UX/UI Designer