Book Wyrm
How might we inspire children
and their caregivers to read together?
The Solution
Book Wyrm is a web-based, multimedia program in which kids write their own representative stories, that they then publish and read with caregivers at home. The program initiates in public schools and completes with a printed book, the physical component being essential to early literacy success.
.
Client
IDEO-inspired
passion project
Team
Jamie Ramsay - UX Designer
Maddy Hale - UI Designer
Chales Mynhier - UX Designer
Time Frame
2 weeks
Skills
Research, Ideation, UI Design, Story Writing, Prototyping, Slidedeck Design, Presentation
Tools & Methods
Figma, Photoshop, Heuristic Evaluation, User Interviews, Card Sort, Comparative/Competitive Analysis, Affinity Mapping, Design Studio, Maze Usability Testing, Prototyping, Trello
Backstory
For this project, our team was asked to get children and caregivers reading together more.
Reading Between the Lines - Research
My research started with studies on early literacy and childhood reading programs to establish the state of the union through qualitative data. I also began user interviews with parents to see how statistics represented the experiences of families, in their own words.
58%
Of kids ages
6-17
love reading
books for fun
25%
of top of class
in reading comprehension
were read to 3x/wk
100%
Of parents
we interviewed
read to their
children daily
*Sources: Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report 7th Edition The Rise of Read-Aloud
US Department of Health and Human Services
Talking with Caregivers
My colleague Charles and I, each conducted 3 user interviews with parents, focusing on learning why they value reading together and understanding how they established reading habits. After synthesizing our interview data via an affinity map, common themes emerged:
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Shared experience
-
Active in their child’s schoolwork
-
Books communicate identity & values
-
Reading routine
-
Independence
Mikayla
Family First
Everything Else Can Wait
-
36, engineer
-
Passionate for her child's education
-
Wants to cultivate independence
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Reads to child before bed
-
Seeks books that feature diversity & inclusion
Plot Thickens - Returning to Research
Melody
The Just-One-More-
Pretty-Please Reader
-
5 3/4 years old exactly
-
Loves reading with Mom
-
Always picks Dog Diaries books
-
Quick learner
-
Wakes up early just to leaf through the colorful books near her bed
The Main Characters
"It's cool to see how we're sharing ourselves as individuals.”
From interviews, it became apparent that families use books as a means through which both caregiver and child to express themselves. Caregivers communicate values and children begin to show their interests through the literature they chose to read. I identified 2 personas from research.
My research indicated that children were eager to read and caregivers were invested in supporting children, but there had to be more to the story. Therefore, I returned to discovery conducting additional research which elucidated barriers to reading at home: engagement and access.
6-8
Age range during which reading aloud at home decreases sharply
9
The age at which reading for fun declines
45
% of U.S. children living in book deserts
*Sources: Scholastic Kids & Family Reading Report 7th Edition The Rise of Read-Aloud
Reading: A Lifelong Love by Randi Weingarten, American Educator Spring 2015
What's Already Out There?
If reading programs are available, are families making use of them? I performed competitive and comparative analysis in order to understand what reading programs already existed and in what form.
Many programs were alike but two stood out: The Conscious Connect and Storybird. They
addressed engagement through creativity and access to printed literature.
A 2018 study of 27 nations found that, regardless of their parents’ education, occupation, and class, children who grow up with books in the home go further in school than those in bookless homes.
Developing a Solution
Mikayla needs a compelling way to engage her child in reading so that she can grow their reading habits.
I considered these key components from research be part of the solution
Engage through inclusive & personalized stories
Develop children's skills in technology & content creation
Meet children
where they are:
public schools
Produce printed material to bolster home libraries
Bring children & caregivers together
to read
Promote
creativity & independence
Design Studio - 10 minutes (x2)
Time-contrained Design Studio was pivotal to our ideation. We discussed our first ideas and iterated in a second session, combining the best parts of each solution. Common to our designs was a way for children to be creative and even silly, based on what parents told us. They reported their reading sessions with kids were most effective when the child chose the stories.
Prototyping & Usability Testing
The prototype was built in Figma and takes students through story prompts allowing them to author a personalized story, with increasing complexity as they advance through the grades. In the kindergarten story, children simply create a character. Then, in the first grade story, kids customize their narratives through dropdown menus.
We carried out usability testing with 9 testers through Maze. All testers completed our tasks with 100% success rate, and completion time got faster from story to story. So we were confident that our design was intuitive and learnable.
1
1
Heat map data from usability testing, indicated that some users were confused where to go on story pages.
2
2
Testing also revealed some users did not realize it was necessary to chose an item from dropdowns to progress. Both were cases for better UX writing, so I added more directive language to the menus.
3
As one additional way to improve the flow through story creation, we added a tutorial that pops up for first time users.
2nd Design Studio & the Printed Page
Between iterations, I suggested we conduct one more Design Studio to refine the program. Out of this session I came up with how we could include the printing prompt. As not all public schools are equally funded, including a way to schedule the on-demand Book Wyrm Bus, equipped with printers and computers, is vital to increase accessibility to the program.
In the initial prototype, we had overlooked adding printing to the website and a touchpoint for the bus. We also created a video-conferencing feature to improve access for relatives who wanted to participate but could not be in the home. Our second design studio is also where we came up with the idea for adding the tutorial featured above.
click video to see second iteration in action and print prompt
Reading Rainbow - UI
Bringing inspiration and imagination into the design was key to a program that would engage students in Book Wyrm. Therefore color and iconography decisions reflected that goal. We chose an orange and green palette to evoke creativity and fresh ideas, respectively. The Book Wyrm mascot, a charming dragon, is a fantastical play on the common literary phrase.
What I Learned
My library is and extension of me. User Interviews shined a light on just how much people select books that they share with loved ones, as a way to communicate values and identity. Parents said that they wanted to learn about their kids through their kids’ choices in books and kids were telling their parents something about themselves through books.
Keep two feet firmly on the ground. The most challenging part in designing this program was to keep a balance between the digital and the physical space in ideating a solution. I knew that other programs were heavily focused in the digital space and that my research validated that access to physical, printed material was essential to early reading success.
Never underestimate your user, no matter how young. Going into the initial design, we spent a long time discussing the technological and literacy competencies at each age and, after secondary research, realized we had underestimated children’s capabilities. Therefore we went back and researched American school system metrics, honing in on the knowledge benchmarks for each grade.
Fill the shelves with stories. I envision ways to take Book Wyrm further, like adding in accessibility for visually-impaired users. Additionally, engagement could incentivized through annual competitions for children to publish a book professionally, perhaps even get it illustrated by a notable artist. That book could be retained by a school or local library as a way of building community-based resources in book deserts.
**Interested in this project? My teammates for this project are amazing.
Please take a moment to check out their work, too: