PROJECT: DISNEY SPARK

Disney Spark was a messaging app for kids and family that allowed not only to communicate but also to play a variety of interactive games, sending stickers and more.

THE CHALLENGE

The main goal was to create a chat app for kids that they would enjoy while their parents feel safe. The actual challenge was designing for the youngest users. We needed to understand key differences between kids and adults, how they interact with websites and apps, using different research practices.

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MY ROLE

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UX Designer. 

User Reaserch, Storyboarding, User Journey, User Personas, Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Wireframing, Prototyping and User Testing.

UX FOR KIDS

In this project I worked along with a team of 3 UX Designers. Our research was centered in boys and girls in between 8 and 14 years old as they already have advanced reading skills and were able to understand content as well. I conducted qualitative interviews, user testings, small focus groups and guided surveys along with the rest of the UX team on site and remotely.

USER TESTING

User testing with kids was a super interesting experience. It was really important to create a friendly atmosphere. We had to adapt our language to them and sometimes We recruited friendship pairs so they could both interact with the app and give feedback to each other. I obtained lots of insights on how and why kids use these digital products. This helped us to improve our app navigation as well as visual and reading communication.

We started testing our first design ideas with several assumptions. We thought we had to be very explicative so that kids would understand how to use the app. Our main surprise was that kids were not afraid of exploring, they touched every single element on the screen allowing them to learn and discover features faster without any need of explanations.

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SAFETY FIRST

Kids being safe was our main design goal, that's why our solution included:

• Parental control that allowed parents to manage friends requests, access a detailed view of their kid's settings and relationships with other users. 

• Onboarding process were kids would select a character, pick an avatar and get a first friend (that would be his parent if the kid is under 13 years old).

• Trusted Friends: friends request had to be accepted before starting conversations.

• Availability to easily unfriend or report users with inappropriate behavior.

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A MAGIC WORLD OF VISUALS

We wanted our visual language to be as magical as Disney is, using bold fonts, bright colors and sparks in order to create a delightful and fun experience. We wanted kids to be surprised at every interaction, so we became obsessed with motion and animation, transitions and microinteractions, music and sounds.

CREATING AN EFFECTIVE NAVIGATION

It was really important to create icons which showed clearly where kids would be taken when they selected it, so we paid special attention to their creation. Disney’s main characters would guide children through the navigation, simplifying it and ensuring that every kid could use it effectively.