Introduction
SpoonRead’s mobile app was a unique take on a child’s eReader. The key assumption behind it was that children in today’s technology age are more distractible than in years past. The basic philosophy of the approach was that if you “spoonfeed” a child small bits of text sandwiched between basic comprehension questions, the familiarity of the segmented consumption process, the gamification, and the medium would boost reading engagement in a way that paper books wouldn’t. My supervisor, myself, and two other designers were brought on to the team to evaluate and come up with an initial redesign of the platform. After a couple months the design team had been reduced to just me.
The Challenge
Outside of a few basic accessibility issues, the existing app itself wasn’t in terrible shape. The initial project scope was to run a complete overhaul of the app and develop a plan to create a gamified universe within the app. By the time I took over as the sole designer, there had been a depletion in engineering resources and the scope quickly downshifted into a visual and structural touch-up only.
Early Work
The early stages of the eReader project were dedicated to a thorough review of learning and motivation literature. The design team put together early wireframes after we all reviewed the existing product’s features and flaws. In addition, much of the kick-off weeks were spent brainstorming and reviewing themes and possible mini-game formats.
Project Scope Review
Project review reflecting our research and discussions before we began visual work.
My Arrival
Once I had assumed full responsibility over the mobile app project I took stock of where the project was at. The SpoonRead team had been reduced to a handful of employees. Funding for learning science consultants was no longer on the table. Funding for game design and development was out of the picture. Fortunately, I had solid research, wireframes, and some initial screens layouts to help me finish up the project.
Challenge 1: Home Screen
The initial home screen was not suited for young people. While kids are quick to figure out and adapt to technology, I was still designing for them. This means that existing flaws like adult language directed at (not toward) them, redundant buttons, useless features like “switch view,” and books in progress not being front and center had to be fixed.
New Home Screen
The new homescreen featured age-appropriate vocabulary and less clutter. Books that the child was reading were placed front and center, and parent controls and actions were pulled back onto the menu.
Challenge 2: Reading Interface
The goal of the reading interface was to keep kids engaged. The existing reader had a pretty design, but came with functional issues. The text didn’t take up enough screen real estate. There was no way to view and navigate to chapters without exiting the book. There was no way to return to the current page. Coins earned for answering questions correctly were delivered in incomprehensibly high numbers.
A big concern was how questions were handled. Questions were presented in a multiple choice format. When a student answered a question incorrectly, their attempt remained visible as they tried again. I remember being a kid and a student. Had I been presented with this format, I would just use visual process of elimination to get pass the question without engaging with the material.
*The question of whether or not students should be able to skip questions in order to not interrupt the flow of reading was discussed and debated at great length. Ultimately it was ruled out for this round of updates*
New Reading Interface
Text & Menu
I decreased the margins, added basic font / color accessibility options, pushed to have a dictionary, and included a chapter menu.
Question Flow
I added a “retry question” option so that kids would have to reset the answers upon a second attempt. I also reduced coin earnings from numbers in the hundreds to a simple system. Readers would earn 3 coins for a correct first attempt, 2 coins for a correct second attempt, 1 for a third, and no coins if their third attempt was incorrect.
Challenge 3: Profile
The original app did not come with a profile section. While the app did track user activity, there was no way to display this information. In addition, while kids could earn coins, they had no way to redeem them. I wanted kids to both be able to measure their progress and to be rewarded for their efforts.
New Profile
During our research, we discovered that extrinsic rewards are not the best sources of motivation for developing long term child-driven reading habits. Due to this, I wanted to focus the profile section on reading progress and achievements; points of pride.
As a secondary bonus, kids could redeem their coins in exchange for newer and “rarer” avatars. This is a feature commonly seen in video games and it was a feature I wanted to further develop down the line. In the meantime I needed a basic and affordable way for readers to spend their coins. I thought it was important not only for students to learn budgeting skills, but also earn their new avatars through reading more.
Results
In a standard product process, there would have been a competitive analysis much higher on this page. However, due to my heavy involvement coming later in the process, I ran a competitive analysis after the redesign. Before we could build a large enough customer base to begin working on their feedback, we pivoted toward consulting and corporate outreach.
