INTERACTION DESIGNER / PRODUCT DESIGNER
KidStory
UI/UX Design, Visual Design, Research
An educational app for kids of kindergarten age to explore stories and games to gain valuable knowledge about the pandemic and increase awareness of other topics, helping kids better understand the pandemic and arrange their free-time to decrease their stress caused by the special period.

ROLE
Visual Design
UI/UX Design
User Research
TOOLS
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
COLLABORATORS
Alyssa Pasek, Mingjun Jiang,
Yushi Gong,
Ziqi Xu
BACKGROUND & CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION
The Covid-19 pandemic was still ongoing in 2021, and it had a great impact on people's lives and mental health. Medical research shows that keeping children healthy during stressful periods such as a pandemic requires more attention. What children experience during the pandemic will fundamentally affect their physical and mental health, as well as learning ability, adaptive behavior, and lifelong physical. Therefore, at this stage, the impact of children's mental health and development should be taken into account seriously, which can help children understand the knowledge of protection against Covid-19 pandemic, and help them to channel their emotions and promote healthy development.
REAL WORLD SCENARIO
During the global pandemic of COVID-19, young children’s worlds are flipped upside down. It may be difficult for them to fully understand the nature of the pandemic, which, in turn, triggers anxiety. Also, the overwhelming amount of information and numerous data sources may also increase their anxiety.
LEADING QUESTION
How might we design a more innovative digital prototype to help children better understand the pandemic, thereby reducing their anxiety and stress?
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
RESEARCH
Target Users
- Children under 8 years old who have access to parental support but also likely confused and freighted due to the overwhelming amount of information received outside of the home.
- Parent of a child 8 years old and younger who are concerned that they cannot comfort their child 24/7 and want to provide a source of consistent and objective information about the pandemic without triggering unnecessary anxiety in their child.
Contextual Research
- “The treatment for anxiety isn’t to make the fear go away, it’s to manage the fear and tolerate uncertainty”
- “Make sure kids are still getting the chance to exercise and socialize with friends via video chats and social media if they are on it.”
- For example, young children may be less able to express their worries in words – but they may show signs of feeling anxious through their behavior, including difficulty sleeping, stomach aches or headaches, and being more clingy or irritable.
IDEATION
- Interactive Digital Picture Book
Children learn about the pandemic by interacting with the cartoon characters to trigger plots, reading stories, and completing interactive mini-games. Acquire relevant prevention and basic knowledge
- Bedtime Story App
Children learn about the pandemic by reading the pandemic-themed cartoon stories which teaches kids the basic knowledge of coronavirus pandemic and how to protect themselves
during the special period. Parents can also use the app to read bedtime stories for kids, which helps comfort kids’ mental healths.
- Interactive Games
Set up a series of small games to introduce children to the meaning of pandemic and how they need to do. Set the way the game interacts can be more than just clicking or sliding, adding tapping, making sounds or other "physical" behaviours. In the process of the game, add voice and aside to increase interactivity.
(e.g. game requires children to do the next step by washing their hands properly)
WIREFRAME



Mood Board
USER FLOW

USER TESTING
We selected three participants for user testing. The participants were not informed of the App's purpose, function, target user or user flow before the testing. This is to ensure the effectiveness of our test. Due to the Pandemic, it is difficult for us to find the participants from our target user group (under eight years old) in this situation. Therefore, we require the participants to conduct the evaluation from the perspective of children so that we can get feedback as close as possible to the views of the target user group.
FeedBack

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
Moving forward with KidStory, we would want to collect more detailed user stories that linked to comprehensive UX flows in order to enable us to validate the use of the application over time as more stories and games were added and the user completed more activities.
A self-assessment could be a possible future enhancement that would allow the user to indicate how they were feeling and in turn provide this information back to the parent via their side of the application.