Voice Interactive Reading Application
THE CHALLENGE THE SOLUTION
Prosodio is an educational software company
that's developed a Voice to Text technology, called
"Pointer," which enables parents to read aloud to
their children while a visual interface follows,
Make this technology into a software, focusing on the parent's experience and needs. It should allow the parents to bond with their child over reading, while empowering them to be involved in their literacy education.
A software design that uses Voice to Text to create enthusiasm in the child for reading, which directly impacts the parent's positive experience.
It should also have clear metrics the parent can use to track the child's progress, prompts to get the child to engage in creating those metrics, and apply the most effective research in whole literacy learning.
underlining words.
MY ROLE
In an Agile Environment, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Research, Wireframes, Content Strategy, UX Copy.
4 people, including myself
TEAM
Our Team. We're a bit eccentric.
TIMELINE
3 Weeks
MY TOOLS
Pointer Educational Software: The Parent & Child Reading Connection
There was no existing application of the Voice to Text technology for which we were designing. The closest example we found was a short marketing video that mocked up a parent reading to their child, with the words in a Visual Interface, underlined, on an iPad. We went from there.
We knew our Client's goal was to allow parents and children to bond while applying literacy research. In this sprint, we were designing for the parent's experience. We also knew the parent's experience was intrinsically linked to the child's. Whole language learning research shows that children learn to read through a direct relationship between sound, images, and storytelling. If the child's experience wasn't engaged, the parent's experience would be frustrated.
Here is our first sketch for the homepage, and the final prototype:
Our first sketch, where we started.
Next, our wireframe.
The Prototype.
Clear and intuitive onboarding was crucial for both parents and children to connect to the interface in a short amount of time.
How we can serve
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Ease of use for software
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Fun encouragement for children to read
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Compatible with other software
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Accessible design
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Scalable for students of different reading capacities
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Make it easier for her to find online book content
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Her her monitor student reading level and progress
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Ability to communicate with parents
How we can serve
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Well researched literacy program
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Fun for child and parent
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Responsive website
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Attractive and interactive design
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Easy for children to learn
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Easy access to child's reading metrics
The Parent
Our Reading Specialist, the Subject Matter Expert
Who are we designing for? Meet our Personas:
Benchmarking /
Competitive Analysis:
Who does Digital
Reading Education Well?
We looked at other Digital Reading Education apps and sites.
We found that many of them used strong, traditional forms of research based instruction that used images and words, more in the didactic instructional tradition.
Our SME interviews stressed the idea that words are a type of image, and that an important part of child reading is practicing the recognition of these word images visually and connecting them to spoken language. Their connection to story needs to be personal and more than just memorizing words.
"For a lot of struggling readers, when thinking about words, they think in pictures, so printed text has no real visual meaning without explicit instruction on how to decode the print and match it to their naturally more picture based way of thinking."
--Angie, Reading Specialist
AFFINITY MAP OF ALL OUR INTERVIEWS: SME'S & PARENTS. WE DID A LOT OF IDEATING WITH ALL THE DATA.
Affinity Map Research
The affinity map allowed up to see patterns emerge:
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Our SME's made it clear that words are connected to images and sounds. A fully robust reading software would connect these three.
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The experience of the parent is linked to the child's.
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Children want to tell stories, and this encourages them to connect to the written word.
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There must be clear and robust metrics for the adult.
Iterations of Voice Feature / Parent Metrics
Pointer follows along as an individual reads, and underlines words or phrases that are spoken too slowly, stumbled over, or stop the flow of the story. In this way, we allow parents to go back later and review the challenging areas with the child.
Iterations of Highly Visual Child's Word Connection
What child doesn't like stickers? We knew we wanted to create a writing desk for the child, and that it should be something look forward to. The stickers are also a writing prompt, so that they can narrate a story inspired by the images.
Children also receive points that get them more stickers for using new vocabulary words appropriately in their stories.
Iteration Station:
Initially we used stickers connected to
existing stories and brands, so that children
would immediately connect.
Upon further thought, we chose to use
unbranded, neutral stickers to leave their
imagination more space.
Once they are done, they can "publish" their story and it will appear in their library.
Decided against.
Keep iterating.
The research led us to decide that empowering the child to be able to tell their stories and add stickers, in addition to reading existing stories, was both whole language learning, and engaging for the child. We designed this to capture metrics on both the child's reading, as well as their use of vocabulary when speaking their own stories.
Impact and Next Steps
Our research gave us so much actionable data that we were able to get very clear on our goals for the prototype UI, but it also made clear that the robust nature of this app would necessitate more than a 3 week sprint.
Our next steps would be:
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Finish the parent's metrics to connect to the teacher's account so they can directly interact.
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Implement clear and intuitive account locks so the parent's data is not accessible to the child.
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Design from the child's user experience.
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Design from the teacher's user experience.
Our team is happy to report that we have been brought on board to Prosodio as partners to continue this design to completion.