top of page
istockphoto-1279276909-170667a.jpg
istockphoto-1270066556-170667a.jpg
istockphoto-1271510919-170667a.jpg
4948a4167a2639e24fffbf6eb9c643ef.jpg
istockphoto-1290051572-170667a.jpg
7046861425d796163c297414eb03d2a3.jpg
e719ef5017d0a6edd452655c25ccab5c.jpg
d228313fd6c8f5f6d08451b5bbb2f0e8.jpg
b4b7e7a6d08a6757ab68ba0a40051992.jpg

Once upon a time is a one-stop app where you can find a great collection of stories for your child and gives you the best storytelling experience

Contribution 

Product strategyUser research & Analysis, Persona creation, Value proposition, market analysis, Story board, information architecture, user flow WireframesUI Design & Usability Testing

Target audience

Parents of kids between the age of 0-8

Duration

  • (Oct 2021 -Nov 2021)

ONCE UPON A
TIME

Designing a new way of story telling

grey-wight-ZOXwrpmYWrA-unsplash.jpg
welcome (1).png
welcome (1).png

PROCESS

That’s how it began!

1

Problem

2

Opportunity

3

Solution

IMG_0218.JPG
IMG_0218.JPG
IMG_0219.JPG
Process
photo-1488521787991-ed7bbaae773c.jfif

Problem

Parents find it difficult to tell good moral stories to their kids

Children love stories

​

​

At any point, at any time, stories simply have the power to flip any situation for the better

Is your child not eating? , Is your child bored sitting at home while it’s pouring outside?

Want to calm your child during a tantrum?

​

Tell them a story and it’ll do the trick!

Without stories, children miss out on a lot of developmental milestones.

BUILDING ONCE UPON A TIME

What i did and what i learned

I adopted a design thinking process for approaching the problem

DesignThinking-Stages_DT-Methodology.jpg
  • Problem statement
  • Value proposition
  • Competitive analysis
DesignThinking-Stages_DT-Methodology.jpg
  • Story board
  • information architecture
  • User flow
DesignThinking-Stages_DT-Methodology.jpg
  • Wireframe
  • Low-fidelity
  • High-fidelity
DesignThinking-Stages_DT-Methodology.jpg
  • Research plan
  • Usability test
Empathize

Secondary

Primary

Conducted a  survey to gain insight to understand how users experience this problem and understand their pain points.

Conducted a secondary research and developed insights from them

180

User survey

6

Interviews

10

Questions

_Do you find it difficult to tell stories to children_ (1) (1) 1.png
Does your children force you to tell stories_ If so, at what time of day (1) (1).png
How do you prefer your child to hear the story (2) (1).png
Would you like to have an app that helps you to tell stories_ (1).png

51%

35%

62%

83%

Parents want their children to listen to the stories along with parents

Parents wants to explain the stories to their children after hearing the gist of the story.

Children wants to hear stories more during bedtime

Parents would like to have an app that helps them to tell stories to their kid.

interview-concept-illustration_114360-1678_edited.png
  • Do you use any other media for storytelling to kids?

  • Can you describe your current work situation and how you take care of your child's storytelling needs?

  • What challenges do you face while telling stories to your child?

  • Is there any way in which you feel these challenges can be resolved?

  • How do you prefer to explain a story to a kid?

​

Held 5 interviews with parents of children between the age of 0-8 to obtain in-depth qualitative responses regarding the key aspects of the prompt.

​

​

" I find it difficult to manage my childs story telling needs, i always run out of stories"

- Veena

From interview 

Interview

Insights

1

Users found it very difficult to tell stories to their kids and are really anxious about running out of stories

2

It is better to categorize the stories according to age because children have different attention spans

3

children want stories during different times of the day it’s better to add categories based on a routine like breakfast tales, bedtime tales, travel tales, etc.​

Meet Sajila & other parents

Consolidating the research & interviews, I created a narrative journey that centers around a parent, Sajila, The goal was to better understand this experience and pin-point potential pain points / opportunities for design. 

76EB6B9C-B68F-430F-BC88-92EAF36D4ECA.JPG

Sajila

0001.jpg

Developed an empathy map identifying and consolidating the thoughts, feelings, and traits of all the users

Remini20211104202225527.jpg

Arun

Remini20211104211614080.jpg

Vidya

IMG_20210228_221653_885.jpg

Parvathy

Remini20211104214218688.jpg

Veena

0001.jpg

Pain points

1

Discovery

Busy Parents have trouble in telling good stories to their children

2

Time

Don’t have time to browse though stories online and select stories from a lot

3

Confused

Users have no visibility to good moral stories. They have to view each story individually to find the best for their childs age

4

Access

The user has limited access to good stories and to keep their children engaged and have their time

User journey map

I mapped out the users’ steps to see how I could simplify their journey to help them reach their most important goals with the product.

Thinks about old stories which was read long back

THINKS

1874137.png

Anxious if a right moral story can be found for a 3 year old

Develop a collection of good stories suitable for every age

Browses stories in internet

SEARCH

7603826.png

Frustrated beacuse doesnt have time to go through every story and find the best

Categorize stories and help select the best for your child

Selects random stories

UNDERSTAND

1874130.png
7603826.png

Confused about the content of the story

Gave a gist of the story so the paretn gets an idea before child hears the story

Tells stories to the kids

TELL

7603826.png

Anxious because doesnt know if the child is enjoyingthe story, child is repeatedly asking questions

Give opportunity for child to interact along with the story

Competitive analysis

unnamed.png
Storytel's_logo.png

Conducted a competitive analysis analyzing the products of competitors who offer similar products which gave us a well-rounded foundation about the market the product will enter.

identified direct and indirect competitors.

​

​

​

​

​

View competitive audit

​

​

​

Value proposition

Thought about the basic features the product can provide and developed a value proposition  of the product 

Untitled (7).jpg

Storytel

Kinderling

Goal statement

Our once upon a time will let users hear stories for different age groups which will affect the growth of children positively and reduce the stress of parents by allowing users to play audio stories during different times of the day. we will measure the effectiveness by retention and engagement of users, No of subscribed users (KPI)

ideate
Storyboard
User’s experience with a product
Bigpicture Storyboard
UX_Design_Certificate_-_Storyboard_Template_(4)_(2)_page-0001.jpg
Closeup picture Storyboard
UX_Design_Certificate_-_Storyboard_Template_(3)_(2)_page-0001.jpg
Site map
Based on the opportunity areas I summarized, I defined the storytelling app's product structure. 
Sitemap Template (10).jpg
The user flow was developed understanding how the product is going to work
Prototype

Low fidelity wireframe

0001.jpg
0001.jpg
0001.jpg
0001.jpg

High fidelity wireframe

Before conducting the usability study, developed the research questions, methodology, key performance indicators, and prompts for the study . View research study
Conducted an unmoderated usability study with 5 participants and recorded the obseravtions. Identified patterns and themes from observations and developed the insights 
1_CXXf3Z39Y7y9fUbzysrPew.png

Insights

​

  • Users need better terms like play trial instead of play sample

​

  • Users don't need a lot of features, minimal features are better

​

  • Selecting age before entering the homepage makes things customizable, but users will just follow only that type of story and won't explore. So selecting age after entering the homepage is preferable

​

  • Position the subscription button such that it's easily recognizable and prominent

​

  • Adding the genre to the story would be great

​

  • Users felt Sign up page is too much crowded

After the usability testing from the insights achieved made changes to the prototype

FAVOURITES (1).png
fAVOURITS (3).png

Problem: Users felt the mark as completed button as unnecessary. Users once completed hearing the story  would prefer to remove the story from favorites once completed. People don't need both the options

Solution:  removed the mark as completed from the options

story (4).png
premium story (11).png

Problem: The subscription button is not easily recognizable and prominent

Solution: I Positioned the subscription button such that it's easily recognizable and prominent

homepage (5).png
SLEEP (1).png

Selecting age before entering the homepage makes things customizable, but users will just follow only that type of story and won't explore. So selecting age after entering the homepage is preferable

Premium story (4).png
premium story (9).png

Users need better terms instead of a play sample. The elements in the bottom were placed in a single line, not scalable. so divided it into two lines. Added genre to the story 

login page NEW USER (2).png
onboarding.png
info 8.png
info 7.png
info 9.png

Problem : Users felt sign up page is very crowded. It included a gist about the product and sign up options.

Solution: Separated the gist and sign up options into different pages for reducing congestion.

Untitled-1.jpg

VISUAL DESIGN

Final design
WHY ONCE UPON A TIME?
The first thing that comes into everybody's mind when they hear about stories is the usage "once upon a time".
They are words worth honoring and passing down the generations. They deliver a special magic to children everywhere – the familiar and the fantastic . So, when it comes to overused words in children’s literature, I think “Once upon a time” should earn a special mention – a free pass to the world of fairy tales!

 

This combination is selected because of this modern and sophisticated look.

1Untitled-1.jpg

#004369

#E5DDC8

#01949A

#DB1F48

Android - 10.png
Android - 15 (1).png
Android - 12.png
Android - 11 (2).png
Android - 11 (2).png
L1.jpg
L1_edited_edited.png

Logo is derived from the idea of audio story and the name . The colors where choose based on the main colors of the application

Optimized for print, web, and mobile interfaces, and has excellent legibility characteristics in its letterforms.

Sans is preferable for young children, or anyone just learning to read. Sans is also good for readers with certain visual impairments.

​

Headline 1

Font

Open sans

Weight

Regular

Size

20px

Headline 2

Font

Open sans

Weight

Bold

Size

20px

Headline 3

Font

Open sans

Weight

Regular

Size

20px

Headline 4

Font

Open sans

Weight

Bold

Size

16px

Subtitle 1

Font

Open sans

Weight

Regular

Size

16px

Subtitle 2

Font

Open sans

Weight

Bold

Size

14px

Body 1

Font

Open sans

Weight

Regular

Size

12px

Caption 

Font

Open sans

Weight

Regular

Size

10px

kelly-sikkema-ikAlhV_zCHo-unsplash.jpg