Visual Designer
Lead Designer
Tablet
After reviewing the research and interview the core problem seems to be with the searchability of these stories and finding a sure recommendation that their children will enjoy. Parents spend more time searching for a story than they do reading it. The scope ranges from finding something age appropriate, the right length of read time, educational content, as well as being a topic of interest. The goal is to help make it easier for parents to find stories to read to their children that they'll enjoy and maybe learn from.
I was responsible for conducting a 1 week design sprint to quickly ideate, prototype, and test possible solutions.
The plan here is to go through a modified version of the Google Venture Design Sprint. Over a 5 day period I went through research, mapped out possible solutions, sketched out the best solution, built a prototype, and tested that prototype.
I like how Goodreads explicitly had a recommendation section that would recommend books based on what you’ve already read and rated.
I also looked at Netflix and how it recommends media, specifically I liked the “Because you watch…” sections that gave recommendations because you watched a particular show or movie.
Whatshouldireadnext.com does a good job of listing out their recommendations in a very clear and easy way to digest.
The first thing to do was to go through the research and learn as much as I can about our users.
After reviewing the research and interview, the core problem seems to be with the searchability of these stories and finding a sure recommendation that their children will enjoy. Parents spend more time searching for a story than they do reading it. The scope ranges from finding something age appropriate, the right length of read time, educational content, as well as being a topic of interest.
Armed with this information, I was able to start brainstorming some initial user flows. What did I envision for this experience? How could I make this as simple as possible? What information is absolutely important to display and how should that be displayed?
I wasn't thinking in visuals just yet, but I did plot out the steps necessary to achieve the goal of finding appropriate children's stories.
Taking the competitor research I've done into account, I went into sketching using the crazy eight method to quickly ideate 8 different possible solutions. I chose the search/recommendation screen because the research showed that parents were most concerned with how to find new books. By focusing on the recommendation/search page this will give us the opportunity to solve for the core problem.
I chose the design because the solution is based on a recommendation system. Using recommendations calculated by what the user has already read and liked can reduce the cognitive load compared to putting in search parameters and requiring additional actions to see results.
While storyboarding, about possible flows that a user might take to get to this feature. As I was working through this problem, I found myself reimagining the steps I thought of from day 1. That paired with some additional research led to my current results.
To me this is where the real fun begins. Seeing a working prototype is incredibly satisfying. I approached this prototype with speed in mind. The sketching that I’ve already done allowed me to prototype quickly and efficiently. Most design decisions were already made so all I had to focus on was building the assets and hooking in functionality.
Because users were struggling to find books their kids would like, I decided to implement a "Because you liked..." feature. This feature would use a algorithm based on books the user has already read and highly rated. With that data it would give the user new recommendations.
Parents also discussed needing to pre-read books in order to gain a understanding of it's contents before choosing to read it to their children. Is the book too long/short? Will they like this topic? Is there educational content to this book?
With those concerns in mind, I wanted to make sure that parents had all that information at a glance before even opening the book. Title, short description, read time, and ratings will give parents what they want to know about a book without having to pre-read it.
Once the prototype was complete, I was able to test five parents who have young children that they read to.
I tested to see for understanding of the navigation and to see if parents understood where to go to find new book recommendations. After a cursory glance, all parents correctly inferred the "Discover" tab is where they needed to go.
There was some confusion on what the "Reading" tab was for. Parent's assumed correctly, but were unsure of their answer.
I also questioned parents for understanding of the "Discover" page. All parents understood that the "Discover" page was delivering book recommendations based upon books that they've already read and liked.
Parents had a over positive response to this page. One thing that was mentioned was that the reading level of books where not listed and how that was a important factor into their book choices. In retrospect the research also reflected the same thing.
Throughout the process I learned how to work with existing research that was done by a researcher. I've also realized through testing, how spot on that research can be. When I missed an important detail in the research, only to come up again in the user testing, I could have saved time by catching it in the first place.
I've also seen the power of user testing and what I can iterate on to create a better product that serve the user.
Site developed by Tim Thomas • 2021
