Tuby
Tuby is a family-friendly app specifically designed for kids, makes it easier for children and parents to find the video they are interested in. all app contents are filtered through STC.
Role: Junior UX Designer
Client: STC
Year: 2018
Tuby application is one of the earliest projects I worked on. I worked alongside a team of UX Designers, and you can say I was the rookie designer in the team. I came out the project with a ton of experience and skills, and I was able to apply the research skills I acquired as a public health professional to this project. I will focus here on the parts I contributed to in this project. So let me take you back in time to the ABC's of my earliest work!
Overview
Design
The Challenge
Usability Testing
Running a usability testing with kids was an amazing, yet a hard experience. Here are the findings:
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Some kids are familiar with scrolling up and down, given that they are familiar with YouTube.
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Placing interactive elements at the bottom of the screen would be within the kid proximity.
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Most Kids struggled to go back to home screen. A clear button should be included to overcome this pain point.
RESEARCH
Identify Users
Through secondary research, I found that there is a huge difference between children of different ages in the way they interact with applications. So it was essential to break down the audience into age segments, each age group has specific skills and traits that need to be addressed in the design ( Ages 3-5, Ages 6-8, Ages 9-12).
The Goal
Here are the principle the team agreed on at the start of the project:
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This product should appeal to kids aged 3–12
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An easy to use interface for both parents and kids
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Fun and engaging experience
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The product is unique, so it was important to create an app that match the mental models of our users. Kids and parents!
Designing for kids is fun but can be incredibly challenging at times. The greatest challenge I faced when I started working on this project, is stepping into and out of the kids and parents personas. With time I was able to act as a child and think as a parent to understand my users.
Eye Tracking
Eye tracking was an interesting activity I conducted with six kids representing the age groups of the users. In this activity, I examined the kids' behavior, gestures, and feelings while they were using YouTube.
The goal of the eye tracking activity:
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Identify the kids' preference in regards to scrolling, vertically vs. horizontally
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Find out how easily the can identify the location of the tabs
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Find out to what extent they are attracted to visual elements on the screen
After defining the features that will be released in the MVP and based on user stories and acceptance criteria, I created some of the wire flows and built the preliminary sitemap. (card sorting was conducted by other team members)
Wire flows & Sitemap
I created the experience taking into account the search results about user segments and each segment needs. I retained the scrolling up and down experience and moved the mean call to actions in screen for the top section, and I design a navigation experience by giving kids clear indication to back for the home screen. I thought about the separated experience to the parental control from the app settings, to help parents easily found it to re-customize the child's experience or change settings away from the kids. I recommended adding an optional background music and sound effects to enhance the engagement for the kids, especially at age 3-5 years, as they depend on visual and auditory feedback.
