Tiny Tales: Find a Great Story, Fast

Overview

Tiny Tales is a startup offering a platform for authors and illustrators to publish stories parents can enjoy with their children on an iPad. However, parents struggled with the growing library, finding it time-consuming and challenging to discover stories that were suitable for their family's unique needs.

Through a five-day design sprint, I developed a tailored solution to address this challenge, ensuring families could efficiently find stories they considered "great" based on their unique values, interests, and preferences.

Problem Statement

How might we make it fast and easy for parents to find a great story to read to their children?

Parents find it challenging to discover age-appropriate, value-aligned stories that engage their children. This difficulty creates friction in what should be an enjoyable, family-oriented activity.

Objectives

• Simplify and streamline the story discovery process for busy parents.
• Allow families to define what “great” means to them through customizable preferences.
• Create an intuitive, engaging experience that involves children in the selection process.

Design Process

Research Review

On Day 1, I reviewed interviews and user data to understand parents’ frustrations and goals when choosing stories:

• Parents find it difficult to find age-appropriate stories that their children will love in a timely manner.
• Parents want stories that promote their values, while capturing their children's imaginations.
• While kids often want to read their favorite stories over and over, their interests may change quickly.
• Reading is often family time, therefore time spent finding a story should be family oriented too.
• Families want children included in the selection process.

I synthesized these insights into key themes and prioritized making story selection quick, flexible, and customizable.

User Flow Development

To achieve efficiency, I mapped out a streamlined end-to-end experience, iterating six times to balance simplicity and adaptability. The resulting flow minimized steps while providing flexibility for detailed customization, ensuring families could quickly find stories aligned with their criteria.

Sketching and Ideation

• Mood Board Creation: I explored solutions from reading apps, decision tools, and children’s libraries to inspire user-friendly designs and decision-making tools.
• Crazy-8 Sketches: Focused on the screen where parents and children enter their preferences. By emphasizing speed and flexibility, I enabled users to input as much or as little detail as desired.
• Panel Board Refinement: Combined sketches to create a cohesive flow, ensuring all screens worked seamlessly together.

Storyboarding and Orientation Adjustments

Through user testing insights and research, I redesigned my sketches to prioritize the iPad’s landscape orientation, which is preferred by most children. I iterated on the designs to ensure clarity and usability, focusing on family-friendly interactions.

Prototyping

I developed a mid-fidelity clickable prototype in Figma that highlighted:

• Dynamic Filtering: Users could input family values, children’s interests, and even time constraints to generate tailored recommendations.
• Adaptive Design: Reduced redundant steps by saving less frequently changing preferences (e.g., values) and allowing quick updates for dynamic elements (e.g., interests).
• Collaborative Features: Included visual prompts and interactive elements that allowed children to participate in story selection.

Usability Testing

Through hands-on testing with parents and children, I focused on the key question:

“Does this design make it fast and easy for families to find stories that are great for them?”

Key Findings:

• Families could quickly find stories by adjusting a few key preferences.
• Parents appreciated that “great” was not predefined but tailored to their input.
• The collaborative design encouraged children to participate, making selection a shared experience.

Story Finder Card V1

Story Finder Card V2

Solution

The final design solved the problem by allowing families to define "great" stories for themselves while making the selection process quick and enjoyable:

• Customizable Preferences: Parents could save family values and update dynamic interests to find relevant stories instantly.
• Flexible Discovery: Users had the option to explore broadly or narrow their search based on specific criteria, such as reading level, time available, or themes.
• Collaborative Interaction: The design included child-friendly elements that encouraged kids to contribute, enhancing family bonding during story selection.
• Quick Reaccess: Features like “Favorites,” “Saved for Later,” and in-progress indicators made returning to desired stories effortless.

Family Tab V1

Family Tab V2

Results

• Efficiency: Parents completed story searches significantly faster compared to their previous experience.
• Personalization: Families appreciated that the app accommodated their unique values and changing preferences.
• Engagement: The design encouraged children’s involvement, fostering a sense of ownership and excitement in the process.

Story Finder

Story Finder Results with two selected

Lessons Learned

• Multicultural and Language Diversity: Multicultural families often use reading to connect with their heritage or expose their children to new languages. Providing stories in multiple languages is highly valuable for these users.
• Audio Features: Books with audio narration are particularly helpful for parents who may struggle with reading or speaking. To enhance accessibility, stories with audio options should be clearly marked and easy to find.
• Sense of Control: Parents value having control over the content their children engage with. They greatly appreciate the ability to filter stories based on family values and their children’s interests.
• Customizable Filtering: Parents prefer filters based on reading levels rather than age. They also favor optional gender filters that allow flexibility without restrictions.
• Screen Order and User Flow: The app design prioritizes the Story Finder for new users and the Bookshelf for returning users, balancing discovery with the practicality of frequent rereading habits.

Future Recommendations

• Enhanced Search Options: Add multilingual and audio story filters and options to prioritize diverse cultural representation.
• Dynamic Recommendations: Incorporate machine learning to adapt to evolving abilities and preferences over time.
• Teacher Mode: Introduce profiles designed specifically for classrooms or groups, enabling educators to align story selections with curriculum objectives, specialized learning needs, and a wider range of reading levels and learning styles.
• Advanced Collaboration: Develop shared profiles for families with multiple caregivers or co-parenting arrangements.

For a full case study feel free to reach out to david@davidux.net.