top of page
Jordan Gozinsky
TinyTales
TinyTales is a tablet application that provides children and their parents with the perfect ebooks for story time
Overview
TinyTales was created as a design sprint project for the UI/UX Design Bootcamp at Stony Brook University. The purpose of the project was to show how in a short timeframe, we can generate new ideas through rapid product exploration and brainstorming. Throughout the duration of the project, I was in charge of all aspects including, mapping, sketching, storyboarding, prototyping and testing.
TinyTales is a new startup that has the goal of helping parents discover the best stories and books to read with their young children. The application is designed for tablet devices, and both browsing and reading ebooks are done within the application.
Goal
Authors and illustrators can publish children's stories to the application for parents to read to their children. This has led to a wide variety of content being available to users including short stories, picture books, educational stories and much more. As the library has grown, parents have expressed that it can be time consuming and difficult to find the right story to read to their children. TinyTales wants to alleviate the process of finding the perfect story for story time.
Day One: Mapping
I initiated the design sprint by closely reviewing the user research that was provided by Stony Brook University. The research came in various forms, including key quotes from interview transcripts, recordings of user interviews and user personas. Once I had organized and reviewed all the information, I began creating maps of possible end-to-end experiences a user might have while using TinyTales.
After completing four maps, I closely analyzed them in order to determine which map would most effectively create a seamless story selection process for TinyTales users. After careful deliberation and continual reference back to the provided user research, I came to the conclusion that the map outlined below was the optimal option for achieving this goal.
Day Two: Secondary Research & Sketching
Secondary Research
Day two began with secondary research. I conducted lightning demos by looking at the solutions used by competitors to solve similar problems to the one I was trying to solve. My first competitor analysis was Scholastic, one of the largest publishers and distributors of books for children and schools. Looking at Scholastic's online store proved to be highly inspirational, especially when regarding how their filters can be effectively applied to improve content discovery for their users.
Amazon was another competitor analyzed, even though its user interface is less-than-ideal. A key pain point that was identified by TinyTales users was the difficulty in finding a story of the appropriate length. Amazon addresses this challenge by displaying helpful information on each book's page. This information is presented alongside icons and includes details such as page count and language. This feature inspired my design for the specific story pages on TinyTales.
Sketching
After completing the secondary research, the next step for the day involved creating sketches. To do so, I utilized the Crazy 8s method. A fast sketching exercise that challenges the designer to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes. The process began by identifying the most critical screen, which, after careful consideration, I determined to be the home screen. I reached this conclusion because the home screen is where users can explore the extensive library that TinyTales offers.
Once the Crazy 8 sketches were complete, they were analyzed and the design I would be using moving forward was selected. This chosen design was then incorporated into my solution sketch. My solution sketch functions as a mini storyboard, consisting of the screen that precedes the critical screen, the critical screen itself and the screen that follows the critical screen. For this project, those screens consisted of the login page, the homepage and a specific story's page.
Day Three: Storyboards
On the third day of the design sprint, my focus was on creating a virtual storyboard, which would be used on day four to aid in the development of the prototype. The storyboard did not include every possible interaction a user could have with TinyTales; instead, it focused on the interactions a user would have while finding the ideal story to read. Developing the storyboard helped me get a better understanding of a user's journey and what could be improved from the sketches created the previous day.
1.
-
Users are required to login when opening the application in order to prevent young children from accessing the application without a parent's permission
2.
-
The homepage features popular stories and suggestions based off of a user's activity
-
Categories are listed on the left-hand side
-
Filtering options are available to give users the ability to filter content based on popular, new, etc.
3.
-
Selecting a category from the left-hand side allows users to see stories featuring a specific topic their children are interested in
4.
-
Viewing a story to learn more about it through a written description
-
Reviews from other users allow parents to get a better understanding of whether or not the story is right for their children
Day Four: Prototyping
One of the biggest challenges of the design sprint occurred on day four. As the design sprint progressed, it was time to begin prototyping so that user testing could be conducted the next day. This posed a challenge since I was the only person working on the entire sprint. It was my responsibility to design each page down to the last detail all on my own.
Given the possibility that children might be using the application without parental supervision, I aimed to keep the designs as straightforward as possible. This included adding clear labels to each button, ensuring that all options were visible opposed to having them hidden within hamburger or dropdown menus and incorporating a password prompt before allowing a story to be accessed.
Login Page
Homepage
Animals Category
Story
Story With Password Pop-Up
Day Five: User Testing & Design Updates
The design sprint concluded on day five with user testing and design updates. My day began with five interviews, consisting of participants ranging from ages twenty-seven to thirty-nine. All of the participants were parents who included reading to their children into their nightly schedules.
Notable results of the tests included:
-
All users wanted bigger book covers and titles
-
Two users found the carousel banner to be unnecessary on the animals category page
-
Three users mentioned that the best sellers and subject & genres items in the categories column are lacking separation
Once the tests were completed, the results were closely analyzed and then used to influence updates to the current designs.
Updates:
-
Increased size of story covers and titles
-
Added boxes around each story
-
Added lines to categories column
-
Increased size of profile icon
Updates:
-
Added option to remove viewing of animals category
-
Increased size of story covers and titles
-
Added boxes around each story
-
Added lines to categories column
-
Increased size of profile icon
Updates:
-
Increased text size under star ratings
-
Added back button
-
Adjusted spacing between sections
-
Increased sizes of profile pictures in reviews section
Conclusion
Before completing this project, I had no experience with a design sprint. All of the projects I had completed previously were spread out over timelines at least twice the length of the design sprint. However, the design sprint was a success. After five days of research, mapping, sketching, storyboarding, prototyping and testing, I was able to progress from research to high-fidelity mockups that successfully achieved the goals set in place by TinyTales.
As with any design project, there were both challenges and successes. A major difficulty proved to be recruiting interviewees. Five days was a short period of time to find multiple people who were not only willing to participate and reliable, but also who matched the description of a TinyTales user. By day three I was able to find five participants; however, on day four, two of them canceled our upcoming interviews. While prototyping I had to locate two new participants who would be available for the following day. After numerous unanswered emails, texts and phone calls I was fortunately able to secure two new participants, one on Thursday night and the other Friday morning.
Fortunately, not every aspect of the design sprint encountered challenges. While conducting additional research on day two, I was able to find valuable inspiration from numerous competitors, which I used to improve my designs. I was also able to strengthen my sketching skills through the Crazy 8s sketching method. Being challenged to create eight sketches in eight minutes helped me accelerate my brainstorming process and taught me that sometimes it takes a few ideas to reach the optimal design for your project.
Overall I learned a lot from this design sprint and strengthened a majority of my skills. I look forward to participating in more design sprints in the near future and creating the best user experiences.
Please feel free to contact me if you would like to collaborate
Phone
631-645-9940
bottom of page