Storeefy

Role

Solo Product Designer responsible for end-to-end interactive storytelling design experience by using a gamified approach to learning.

Skills

Storyboarding User Interviews Interaction Design

User Flows Personas Prototyping Visual Design

Inter-generational gap is widening around the world

With the advent of technology, there is a widening generation gap that is observed around the world. Exposure to popular media since early formative years is changing the cultural landscape.

In certain cultures, age-old storytelling that was a means of mutual bonding is no longer seen and is restricted to places of cultural interest. Due to relatively few topics in common, conversations have become non-existent between tech-challenged grandparents and folklore-challenged grandkids.

Introducing Storeefy

Storeefy introduces an interactive way of listening to age-old stories. It leverages gamification of cultural folklore to bring families closer.

Delving into the problem

In order to understand this diverse demographic, I decided to conduct informal interviews with users. Based on these interviews, I was able to create personas, Aryan and Meena. User research showed that though these groups were on the opposite ends of the age spectrum with diverging needs and considerable differences, they had a few similarities.

Kids preferred to interact with technology. Older adults such as grandparents preferred hardcover books and weren’t very familiar with technology. Older adults were keen to connect with their grandkids, nephews or nieces in a manner that doesn’t seem too forced. This user group also expressed concerns about relatively few topics in common, increasing family disconnect and fragmentation apart from the loss of family bonding time.

Solution Exploration

By exploring both online and offline solutions that spanned media types such as smart toys, role-playing games and even community learning sessions, I found some interesting insights about the problem at hand. Towards the end, I learned that none of the initial design explorations worked in real-life as is. Research interviews with users showed that anything that would be on a mobile device such as smartphones or tablets would be the most suitable.

Design Rationale

Engages both older folk and kids

Introduces two modes - Story and Record. While Story mode is aimed at both kids and older folk spending time together, the Record allows adults to enhance shared storytime experience by recording audio snippets of stories in their own language replacing the default audio snippets.

Both kids and older adults really liked the fact that they could get really involved with the app and take breaks when necessary to talk about the story at a deeper level. Kids showed signs of excitement to see their grandparents' voices from the app in a story in their native languages. Older folk found it relatively simple to navigate the app and record audio snippets.

Blends authentic storytelling with gamified elements

In this screen, it engages the user by assigning the task of spotting the deer. The story pauses momemtarily to enhance the interactive nature of storytelling and proceeds on task completion.

Kids enjoyed interacting with the story as this is not something that they do in cultural storytelling settings. Older folk expressed that they were impressed to see how engaging their folklore could get and got nostalgic how they didn't have access to such technology back in their childhood.

Creates story albums based on engagement

In this screen, it engages the user by assigning the task of spotting the deer. The story pauses momemtarily to enhance the interactive nature of storytelling and proceeds on task completion.

Kids really liked this concept and showed higher engagement levels with the app. Adults liked the fact that the app could personalize content to this extent. They also expressed how they wished they could insert their own images, edit those auto-created albums and purchase them in the store section.

Incorporates tasks and rewards

Kids were given candy or appreciated when they performed a task in real-life. Taking that concept into the app worked.

Splitting a story into multiple levels and engaging them with tasks, make it a lot more easier for kids who were prone to restlessness and had short attention spans. By breaking down the story into levels similar to chapters in books, users were able to consume information at the rate that they were used to.

Introduces a friendly character that kids can relate to

Adding a friendly character who walked users through the app and be a part of the stories made it exciting for kids.

Kids enjoyed listening to the character and earning coins by completing tasks. Some kids who were curious went on to pause a story to ask the adult engaged with them about finer details of a story. Adults found this part to be enriching as kids asking so many questions wasn't something that they had witnessed earlier.

UX Writing and Micro-Interactions

From an interaction design standpoint, adding fun loading states and 404 screens reduced anxiety if the app took long times to load or it had bugs. Despite the nature of these states, kids seemed to enjoy contextual loading states or 404 screens that had a relatable character onscreen while they waited.

Future Scope and Project Takeaways

There is a lot of potential in the space as we are at the helm of a generational shift that happens every few years. As the world is becoming a lot more inter-racial with mixed ethinicities and first-generation kids, this conceptual product seeks to be the melting pot of cultures. Taking this a notch higher would mean creating content for AR and VR worlds and changing how people perceive cross-generational products.

Working with two different generations is a different experience altogether. Both are similar in a lot of ways and it was quite fun!
It takes a lot of patience to ensure these users to get to the actual painpoint. Research sessions tend to get longer and both sets of users tend to get distracted too often.