Disney BYJU'S Early Learn
A specially crafted Early Learning Program for young minds
ROLE
UI/UX Designer
Worked with the Design Director, UX lead, Product managers, and Dev team.
Create a fun, engaging, and effective app for younger kids LKG to 3rd class.
The initial task to understand the type of content and how they are consumed by kids. By exploring competitive apps and how kids are responding to them helped us to build a framework for the research. We prepared a set of preliminary questions to assess the motor skills and cognitive load with respect to the participant's age.
Research Objectives
1. What are the kinds of experiences that can make kids immersed and indulged?
2. What is the attention span of the target group and what are factors contributing to it, will they vary by age?
3. How to engage the kids in this app?
4. How to learn in a fun way?
5. Which all interactions are harder and which are easier for the kid to use?
Design Process
This is the framework I have followed throughout the entire project. Where multiple stakeholders aligned at each of the milestones and made decisions on feedback at different stages.
Our process started with research Which is to identify the users, since it is a B2C2C product, that's is business to the consumer to the customer. Here the consumer is and customer and child and parent respectively. identifying their needs and expectation refined the foundation of our research phase. Based on the research documented the findings we collaborated with our stakeholders, customers, product managers, and Game and App Developers. Early low-fidelity wireframes are defined from the detailed product requirement documents, which helped all stakeholders to be on the same page. Parallelly I have started with deciding the color palette and visual aesthetics of the entire product. We have tested the low-fidelity prototypes for getting real-time feedback. Based on the feedback, high-fidelity designs have been created and further given for testing with kids. The final phase is Design Delivery for implementation. I have sat with the devs/engineers to avoid miscommunication and support them to build and launch the product successfully.
Research
User Groups
We identified two main user groups:
Kids
Testing with kids is entirely different from the adult. Kids are brutally honest since they won’t be having much fear of getting judged as we adults are. Asking direct questions will also won’t do the work, because most of the time kids won’t give honest feedback. Trying to portray them as smarter. They try to play safe by giving answers which adults want to hear. Explaining things in a simpler way using super simpler vocabulary did the work. Asking questions indirectly was the method we followed.
Parents
Most of the parents have a fear that their child is more into playing and not learning. They need the child to be in a safe and secure platform with an option to choose the content. They should be able to understand language, Answer simple questions, Learn to ask things, Counts to five to 10 things. They want to be informed about their child's activity and progress at each stage and should be able to demonstrate those skills in the real world.
We have created a design sprint with stakeholders inside the studio to understand various touchpoints and came up with strategies to address each. This sprint has helped us to come up with product pillars and a roadmap for the deliverables at each phase.
Userflow
Based on the product requirement of onboarding parents from across the globe I created a signup flow with country selection as the start.
The above represents the task flow and navigation across the product.
Parent Zone has been made based on parent requirements and account setting which includes subscription details and child progress.
Sitemap
The site map gives an overview of the tasks and information architecture of the product. This has helped us internally to identify various touchpoints which helped greatly in terms of communication.
From Paper to Pixels
Wireframes have helped us iterate faster and come up with solutions.
Visual Aesthetics
We have done desk research along with user testing to understand the visual aesthetics of the particular age group. The color palette and shapes to go for have been validated by the users
Typography
Most children at the age of 3-8 years learn to read by going letter by letter until they are able to make sense of an entire word. We have chosen two typefaces based on readability and legibility. For the Title and heading, we choose mIkado since it gives a storybook and hand-drawn feel. The imperfections on the letters make them more distinctive and easy to remember.
And for the body text which kids learn to read and write we have chosen Sassoon since its exit stroke helps the child identify each letter.
Colours
Kids mentally categorize items based on color. They generally prefer bold, primary colors and high contrasts in graphic layouts that evoke exploration and discovery. we have used bright shades of green, yellow, blue, and red to keep them engaged.
UI Screens
Onboarding and Account creation
Parent phase - We have taken the major decision to make all parent target screens portrait mode to give a clear distinction between child play area and parent interaction screens. One of the major factors for this decision was the keyboard snippet on input screens which is hampering the experience in landscape mode which may result in user drop off in the registration/onboarding phase.
Worldmap and Learning path
Child Phase - World Map is the home screen of each profile, and the learning map represents the progress child making in each quest. The learning map represents the path between each task. The learning map illuminating interaction gives the child motivation. enough to reach the end goal which is completing a Topic.
Parent Zone
Parent zone has been kept under parent gateway to avoid accidental changes made by the child.
Account settings and Payments
Designed only for parents, account settings and payment screens provide information on current subscription and account information to the user.
Child Report
Child Report has been designed to communicate the child's learning progress and performance on each activity in the app.
Mission Accomplished
The mission statement is the summary of tasks and missions achieved.
Badges
Child's milestones are represented for the parent as badges. Each badge gets unlocked once a milestone is achieved or completed by a child.
Activity
The activity gives the snapshot overview of the child's performance on each app.and the quality time spent on each type of media
Skills
child skills are growing and hence we cant keep a limit on each skill set. Setting levels for each skill set has solved this problem.
History
Shows the child's ongoing progress on each quest in terms of respective subjects.
Conclusion - A Foundation to Early learn
This is by far the most challenging project I have done, which includes both Disney IPs and the youngest user group. I would say it has given me valuable UX learnings and design experience.
Explore, Learn and Celebrate with Disney. BYJU'S Early Learn