TINYTALES IPAD APP

UX Designer, 2023

about the product

TinyTales is a startup that provides a platform for independent authors to contribute to a growing library of stories for parents to read to their young children.

how can we make it faster & easier for users to find specific content in the tinytales app?

The TinyTales story catalog has grown significantly & users have reported that it is becoming more difficult & time-consuming to find appropriate stories to read to their children. I was tasked with improving the user experience through a 5 day modified design sprint.

my responsibilities

  • Competitor Analysis

  • UI Design

  • Prototyping

  • Usability Testing

day 1: understand

I was provided with previously conducted TinyTales user research for this project. The research included a persona for the typical TinyTales user: a 34-year-old mom of 2 kids, ages 4 & 6.

Behavior:

  • Reads to her children before bed & values this time for connection

  • Wants to instill in her children a love of reading from an early age

  • Knows that reading is a good way for her children to learn about new things

Frustrations:

  • Spends more time looking for a story than reading it

  • Has difficulty finding a story about specific subjects her children are interested in

  • Wants to find stories that have an education value & are age appropriate

In addition to the provided research, I conducted a competitor analysis of 3 other iPad apps that provide a library of stories for children.

Since parents reported difficulties in quickly finding specific content in the TinyTales app, I focused my research on how each app handled categorizing, organizing, & presenting available content. I studied the home screen & search screens of each app.

day 2: sketch

On day 2, I used my competitor analysis document & user research as guides for my ideation sketches. I employed the Crazy 8s method to come up with many solutions for the critical screen, the search screen, in a short amount of time. I also organized a user flow that would make it quicker to find specific content.

day 3: decide

I combined elements from my Crazy 8s exercise to design a search screen with books organized by categories & filters for narrowing down search results. I then created a storyboard for the steps a user would take when searching for a book about tigers for a 4-year-old.

day 4: prototype

I worked in Figma to create a functioning prototype of my storyboard screens. I timed myself during the prototype design process because I found myself getting sidetracked by small details. I had to remind myself to lay down major elements first & not get distracted on making a single button or other element perfect. This helped me avoid getting bogged down in minor decisions & focus on the major structure and flow of the pages. Once I got all of the major elements blocked out on the screens, I gave myself 90 minutes to add color, images, & button details.

day 5: validate

conclusion

I enjoyed working on a project using the Design Sprint Method of app development. I was able to hone my time management skills & maximize my ideation process by avoiding getting sidetracked by minor details too early on in the process. This project also presented some unique challenges in running usability testing because of the short project time frame. I was able to find a creative solution for getting quick feedback using a combination of guerrilla & moderated usability testing methods.

The demographic of users for the TinyTales app are busy caregivers of small children. Parents’ schedules are often inflexible & set weeks in advance. Recruiting these individuals for a traditional usability test on such short notice proved difficult. To address this problem, I opted to do a modified guerrilla test. I decided to take my prototype to the local elementary school & ask for feedback from parents & staff members. All of the people who participated read to their young children at least once a week. Three had experience using other apps to read to their children. Two were aware of other book apps, but had not personally used them. The design brief for TinyTales asked for a solution to existing users having a difficult time quickly searching for specific categories of books. I designed the guerrilla test to observe how much difficulty my participants had using the app to find a book about tigers for a 4-year-old.

  • Every person tested easily found the search function & successfully searched for tigers.

  • Three people immediately found the age filter feature, while two hesitated to think about how to narrow the results & then found the age filter.

  • Feedback was generally positive & some participants noted the app was easy to figure out & felt familiar to other book apps

  • One participant described the app as “user-friendly”