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An app for interactive story reading and volunteer management

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Overview

GoRead.pk is a community app for story reading and volunteer management. The goal of the app was to incorporate a fluid story reading sessions for the volunteers and the school children in government schools.

Completed

March 2018

Roles and Responsibilities

User Research (Qualitative and Quantitative)

Requirement Gathering

Data Analysis and Ideation

Wireframing

Visual Design 

High Fidelity Prototyping

Tools

Sketch

Invision

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Problem

There are many public schools in Pakistan where engagement based courses that foster creativity and cognitive development are often nonexistent.

Idea

Build a story reading app that facilitates and engages the volunteers to visit those schools and read out stories to children as well as engage with them

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Establish a feedback system that eventually contributes in building a framework for volunteers in interacting with children

The process

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User Research

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Ideation

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Visual Design

User Research

We conducted a general survey with convenient sampling.

We wanted to target full time office workers who were passionate about volunteering 

We also reached out to three survey respondents for an in-depth semi structure interview

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Based on our survey data and interviews we created three persona's and empathy maps

Personas

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Persona 1.png
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Empathy mapping

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Persona 1

  • Loves reading and loves interacting with children

  • All about positive impact in this world

  • Loves humour and interaction

Persona 2

  • Has a sense of duty to teach 

  • Spontaneous and doesn't like reading

  • Believes in preparation

  • Prefers engagement 

  • Enjoys attention

Persona 3

  • Sense of duty

  • Stage fright

  • Discourages phones with children and a disciplinarian

  • Good at teaching and used visual cues and physical cues

Takeaways from the personas and empathy maps

Findings

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Participants frequently read blogs and stories on their cell phones

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Volunteers were often intimidated by children

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Hustle and time constraints are the deterrents

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Volunteers were not motivated to travel a long distance to read out stories

Ideation

User journey 

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Crazy8 sketching

We prepared Crazy 8 sketches for quick ideation of the user flow and the layout

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Low fidelity wireframes

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At the discover, volunteer can select an ebook for the story reading session

After selecting user can review the synopsis, genre and the average reading time of the book

Volunteer can begin an hour long recorded story reading session. If the story exceeds an hour the session can be paused

Vounteers can rate their own experience regarding the session and also take a selfie with the children (with consent)

After finishing a session, volunteer can send feedback regarding the session and suggest improvement

Visual design

Product Onboarding

Vibrant illustrations to showcase the product features and the app overview

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Discover

Our volunteers are passionate about reading stories to children but they aren't child psychologists or trained teachers. It was necessary to create a system with regular feedback to improve the reading experience for children as well as volunteers

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The idea is to create a digital story reading experience that is similar to reading a book. Because of the hustle, volunteers need to have an accessible channel to hold a story reading session

Step 1

Under Discover  the volunteer selects a book to read

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Discover

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Discover with search

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Pop up for the first time users

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Pause and play storyreading view

The app is designed to observe the delivery and the interaction of the volunteers with children to gradually build a framework of interaction for the cognitive and behavioural development of children

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The ebook view resembles the interaction of Apple Books. Familiar interaction may contribute to recall over recognition

Step 2

Volunteer gets acquainted with the selection before beginning the session

After selecting a book, the volunteer can either read before the session or begin the session and improvise

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Step 3

Volunteer hits play and reads out to children 

The sessions are recorded to observe how volunteers conduct the sessions and to identify communication problems

Feature onboarding

The feature onboarding informs the first time volunteers about the pause and play as well as the snack box that would appear mid session prompting the volunteers to take a break or interact

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Session feedback

Step 4

At the end of the session, volunteers will be asked to share any notes regarding the session they may have.

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After getting the appropriate consent from the teachers, volunteers can also take a picture and share on their social media for further engagement. 

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The social reward may encourage further investment in the cause

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User Feedback

The user feedback appears after the end of a session or a task

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Alert screens

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Design System

Colors

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Font family

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Components

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Outcomes 

Takeaways

  • Facilitating a smooth story reading session on a small screen will require multiple design iterations 

  • Figure out constraints and workaround to manage permissions to record the story reading sessions 

  • Consider and test a feedback solution that doesn't involve recorded session

  • Introduce a selection and training module for the volunteers who are experienced in communicating with children (to minimise recorded story reading sessions)

  • Consider and test a design for tablets 

  • Include more interviewers 

The next steps

  • Test the prototype with the potential users (Nielsen Norman suggest 5 participants for a usability test) 

  • Iterate on the solution along with the Product owner and the developer 

  • Develop and deploy the MVP 

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