Me: A Kid's Diary
UI/UX Design
For Tinybop's 5th app in the Digital Toy's library, we designed several tools to help kids document their worlds: their families, friends, pets, feelings, likes, dislikes, wishes, and dreams. As they play and create, kids build self-awareness, self-confidence, empathy, and kindness. Read more about the problem-solving and prototyping that went into building this app below.
Primary goal:
How might we allow kids to customize their diary so it feels unique and responsive?
We identified several tools kids are already familiar with using to express themselves, like Snapchat and Music.ly, and mapped out various app structures to not only support those tools but also visualize user inputs in surprising and interactive ways.
The Tools
After researching common tools kids are familiar with from other apps, I collaborated with our team to prototype and design a set of 6 key tools custom for this app to help kids express themselves when responding to various question prompts. Using Proto.io, I designed mockups to visualize user flows for our product, design, and development teams. Once finalized, I collaborated with our design team to create the graphics for export into Unity.
What is this "Me-Map"?
The 'Me-Map," as we refer to it, is the ever-changing depiction of your world. It is the main, scrollable hub where kids access new question prompts, view/edit avatars, and store answers to completed tasks. Figuring out the structure of this map and how much control we wanted to give kids over this space was a grueling process. We compromised by providing random questions that can float and be moved anywhere, as well as questions grouped by "islands" for kids in search of specific question themes.
Download Me: A Kid's Diary, Tinybop's 5th Digital Toys app, on iTunes. Featured as one of Apple's "Best of App Store 2017."
App mentions: Cool Mom Tech, Fast Co. Design
FULL PROJECT TEAM:
Nneka Bolden, Leah Feuer, Russel Savage, Yin Liu, Ashley Manetta, Maxim Kolbowski-Frampton, Jeanelle Mak, Beckie Choe.