SCHOLASTIC

Duration: 2 Weeks   Team: 4 Designers   Tools: Invision, Sketch, Omnigraffle    

Deliverable: Low fidelity interactive prototype

My Role: I was in charge of creating survey questions, conducting interviews, contextual inquiry, persona development, sketching, wireframing, prototyping, and usability testing. 

THE CLIENT: Scholastic is the world's leading publisher and distributor of children's books.                             

THE TASK: We were asked to take advantage of digital technology and positive role models to encourage children to read books outside of school. 

THE PROBLEM: We discovered from our interviews and surveys that children were not reading on digital devices. It was also revealed that the approach to integrating a role model was not necessary. The real challenge was finding a way for children to choose and find paper books in a fun and exciting way. 

THE SOLUTION: A new bookshelf and quiz feature to encourage children to read outside of school. 

OUR HYPOTHESIS

Children will be encouraged to read more outside of school if they had a role model on a digital device that will keep them engaged. 

RESEARCH

A closer look at Scholastic's website...

There is a children's section called "The Stacks" that has lots of quizzes and games that do not encourage children to read. 

SURVEY

What media are kids using to read?

From our results, it is clear that children read mostly paper books rather than digital. 

INTERVIEWS

Do you have a role model?

From our interviews, we discovered that role models are not important. Several of the interviewees had no idea who their role models were. 

CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY

Child and Parent Interactions: Parents let their children wander the aisles to look for their own books. Children did not get any help from the parents because it's much more fun for the kids to be able to have a say in what they want to read. 

What do kids really like?

There was an entire section dedicated to these quiz books. This appears to be the new fad where children can answer a multitude of random questions for fun. 

NEW HYPOTHESIS

Children would be more encouraged to read outside of school if there was a way to take advantage of digital technology to make choosing books fun and exciting.

PERSONA DEVELOPMENT

From our research, were were able to start developing personas. We managed to narrow it down to one primary persona. Meet Lanie! 

USER FLOW

Keeping our primary persona Lanie in mind, we were able to develop a user flow based off of "The Stacks" website. This is our second iteration that was created in Omnigraffle.  

SKETCHES

Initial sketches of possible interfaces before digitization. 

DESIGN ITERATIONS

Several sketches later, we were able to start digitizing. I was in charge of creating the wireframes in Sketch while receiving plenty of feedback from my teammates during the process.

First Iteration (click to the right to see more wireframes)

Second Iteration (click to the right to see more wireframes)

USABILITY TESTING

By the time the second iteration of wireframes was complete, we began usability testing. I was in charge of importing the wireframes to Invision to created a working prototype. After the first run of tests, we realized that the recommendations page as well as the bookshelf was confusing for the user. We made several adjustments after each round of usability testing. 

DELIVERABLE

After much research and several prototype iterations, we came up with a solid solution that satisfies the needs of both the user and the business. The user has a way to choose books in a fun and exciting way and the business will be able to take advantage of their existing website to encourage children to read outside of school. 

Back to Work