5-Day Design Sprint Ipad App
Role
UX Researcher
Information Architect
UI Designer
Applications
Invision Studio
Adobe Creative Cloud
Duration
5 Days
Client Overview
TinyTales is a new startup where authors and illustrators can publish children's stories for parents to read to their children.
Problem Area
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. TinyTales wants to make it easier for parents to find a great story to read to their children.
Problem Statement
I was tasked to run a design sprint to find a way to make it easier for parents to find a great story to read to their children.
Design Constraints
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The solution should be designed an an Ipad or Table app.
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The stories are discovered and read in the app - parents are not ordering hard copies, printing out stories, or reading on another device/app.
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TinyTales already has an inventory of stories written by contributing authors.
Day 1
Research & Personas
Research Highlights
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Parents need to find books that have a comprehension level for their kids. Kids get easily bored if they do not understand or if the book takes too long to read through.
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Reviews and recommendations from other parents, family or friends are a big reason parents pick certain books.
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Finding the right book by topic, interest, comprehension level, how long a book is and how long it will take to read is something important to most parents.
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Parents read a portion of the book to preview the book before reading to children.
Persona
User Journey
Day 2
Sketching
After the kickoff call, I conducted a heuristic analysis for 3-5 direct and indirect companies - deep-diving into their design to identify what makes their features unique. I considered how people would engage with the platform and investigated opportunities for At Ease to provide a highly intuitive and usable product while differentiating themselves from well known competitors in the space.
Lightning Demos
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I really like the Top in the US today section of Netflix. It clearly shows what is being watched the most and I believe bringing this sort of aspect to TinyTales so show parents which books are trending might make the job of searching for a book quick.
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Netflix also does a great job of showing recommendations based on what the user has been watching and that would be another great way to distinguish similar books for the parents to choose if their kids like certain books.
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This app called Monkey Stories: Books and Games has a fun playful interface. I would like to incorporate some sort of distinguished icon that shows the difference in level for kids. I think that is an important aspect that will make finding books for users' kids easier.
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Epic does a great job with the way books are previewed. I would like to incorporate this into TinyTales. I believe that certain aspects of a book need to be immediately available for parents to easily and quickly pick out a book.
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Also, book of the week is a great way to get certain books populated and reviewed so parents can pick the best books for their kids.
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A good preview of the book is something I would like to incorporate.
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Simple and clean design so that book titles pop. Colors and fun graphics make kids pick books. Kids especially like to “judge a book by its cover.”
Crazy 8's
After doing the lightning demos, I was tasked to do some Crazy 8's.
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Crazy 8’s are a core Design Sprint method. It is a fast sketching exercise that challenges people to sketch eight distinct ideas in eight minutes.
Three-Panel Boards
I completed my crazy 8's and now it was time to pick the most critical screen and create a three-panel board.
Day 3
Storyboarding
For my storyboarding there are not many screens. I want to make this process quick, fun and easy so that parents and children can enjoy books with ease.
Screens will be simple and clean but also fun. I think the option of sharing good books with family and friends will help parents get good recommendations for books for their kids and will help with the ease of choosing a book.
Day 4
Design Screens & Prototype
Getting to see sketches turn in to digitally designed prototypes is something I thoroughly enjoy. I was able to spend this day 4 working through each screen to make a high fidelity prototype to test with users.
High Fidelity Screens
Prototype
Day 5
Usability Testing
Day 5, I put my TinyTales prototype in front of 5 participants who fit the target audience.
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I had them go through 3 tasks. Every participant was able to get through the first two tasks. For the third task I asked them to share a book; all 5 participants did the same thing. They wanted to click right on the mailbox button on the bottom nav.
To solve this problem, I added a share button on the preview of the book as well as at the end of the book, so it makes an easier more visible option for parents to share books with others.
Key Takeaways
I really enjoyed working on this 5-day design sprint. I think that it is a fun and efficient way to test out new concepts. The biggest thing I learned while doing this design sprint is working fast and having to think on my feet.
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I think this design sprint proved to be successful. I was able to tackle the problem of helping parents find books for their children in a quick and easy way.
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I got positive feedback on the design of the app as well as the quickness of being able to find a book.