Tiny Tales: A Solution to Quickly Discover New Books
As the primary designer, I ran a solo version of the Google Ventures design sprint. I synthesized insights from user research, built a lightweight high fidelity prototype, and conducted usability tests for this case study.
Introduction: Background
Tiny Tales is a start up where authors and illustrators can publish children’s stories for parents to read to their children. Since the company has grown the parents have expressed that it is very time consuming for them to find stories. Tiny Tales wants to help their users find books to read to their children faster.
Problem
Parents love reading to their kids. It is a great time for children to learn and for them to bond with their parents. Unfortunately, finding the right book to read can be very overwhelming with so many stories it feels impossible to find a story that you and your children enjoy. Lately it feels like users have been spending more time scrolling for books than actually reading.
Solution
My solution to this problem involved improving the browsing experience by creating a new homepage that showed a variety of options to find new books.
During this five day sprint, I prototyped a solution that allowed users to quickly and easily find new books to read based on their interest.
Day 1: Mapping Solutions
I dove into research to explore the problem space. Tiny Tales had already conducted user research through user interviews and recorded an interview with a participant. The highest priorities of the users are finding stories quickly for a variety of ages. The users prioritize finding stories that their children will enjoy and are interested in. A secondary concern is knowing the length of the stories and finding stories in a variety of topics that are engaging.
Next I mapped out several user journeys for the Tiny Tales app. This helped me visualize how to accomplish the end goal of the experience: finding new books faster. I selected the most direct user journey to allow for minimal steps from beginning to end, with the user selecting a category/topic to direct and simplify their search for a story.
Log In → Select Age→Main Home Page → Selected Category → Book Info → Read
Day 2: Sketch
Lightning Demos
I started Day 2 with a solo round of lightning demos to investigate existing reading experiences for users finding new books. While exploring these sites, I focused on the main goal of finding new stories quickly with the least amount of steps. I studied two well known book sites and apps; Barnes and Noble and Apple Books. These sites focused more on the selling aspects than user experience so I pivoted and studied two entertainment apps; HBO and Spotify, that focused more on the user experience.
Barnes & Noble
Separates books by age, Main page once you click that - options to shop by author and character; top picture books, holiday themed reads, lots of categories of books but it's a long list that could make the process of finding a book tedious.
Apple Books
Did not really have a kids section but it did have a discover section and a list of trending books which is helpful.
Spotify
Did a really great job showing all the different categories in a non overwhelming way. Tons of ways for users to enjoy old things and find new things based on suggestions from the app. Also had discover weekly, Based on what you listened too Also had things separated by mood.
HBO
Great features to help you decide and narrow it down. Loved the main page. Great easy way to possibly keep track of past books, list of future books, just added books and see what's trending.
Sketching
For my Crazy Eight sketches, I focused on coming up with a unique way to set up the homepage that showed new ways to discover stories. My goal was to pack in a variety of information in an interesting way that did not seem overwhelming. My main goal was to make discovering a new story as easy as possible. I considered the main persona’s goals when thinking about the most vital details the user would need to find a new story.
Day 3: Decide
On Day 3, I had to nail down the critical function of Tiny Tales. The primary purpose was to help users discover and read stories. So I focused heavily on deciding what information users needed to find stories. I want to make this as simple as possible so users could dive right into reading stories. I wanted to reduce the amount of scroll time and get users stories they wanted to read faster for an easy reading experience.
I chose to focus on the main home screen. The sketches above highlight the critical screen ( Main Home Page) log in, and book selection.
When creating my storyboard, I utilized the layout of HBO and Spotify to show a wide variety of topics in a simple easy to follow layout. This helped me pack in a lot of the most important features into one page and reduce the amount of screens needed to achieve the users end goal. All while not limiting the options for users to explore.
Day 4: Prototype
I created the five key screens from my storyboard sketches then created a lightweight design prototype in Marvel. I planned to use this prototype to determine if the redesigned home page helped users find stories faster.
Day 5: Validate Designs
Usability Testing
I interviewed 5 participants via Zoom to determine if the primary function (finding new stories to read faster) of my design was practical.
Each participant read stories to children on a weekly basis. Most of the users had experience using apps for this and quite a few books at home.
I gave my participants one task scenario: Find a new book to read to your child.
I found that all participants were able to complete the task. Users loved how simple and easy it was to discover new books. Adding the book of the day section was a huge hit. They loved that they could preview the story and see reviews before they began reading as well. However, I also received feedback from a couple of users that felt the main page was a bit cluttered. They felt the Discover new books sections could be a page of its own.
Recommendations and Future Iterations
To resolve the issues with Age at the top of the app I made the age selected I highlighted the selected age in a bright color for increased clarity and under-stability. This was a very crucial step in the user journey so, I had to ensure the user could complete this and advance to the next step.
To address the lack of clarity between the Discover New and the Categories I increased the size of the headings and made the category buttons slightly smaller so the user could easily notice that they were different sections.
After user testing I went back and adjusted the UI elements by rounding the sharp edges to give the app a friendlier feel to make it more fun.
Reflections
This was my first attempt at a GDV sprint and I loved it. The speed of the sprint allowed me to not overthink and come up with solutions and not second guess myself. I was able to clearly address all user concerns in a simple way that most of the users really enjoyed.
In the future I would spend more time on my sketches . With the speed of the sprint a lot of sketches and notes were just hastily written inside margins of sketchbook but looking back they would have been more effective if they were organized better. I took a lot of time planning however, the plans would not have been clear to anyone else.
The resulting solution for the sprint overall was simple and effective. My design solution helped users discover new stories faster. In a future sprint I would consider adding gamification elements such as a progress bar and badges to make the app more fun and encourage the users to read even more.