Noddy's primary goal is to address the reading, writing and remembering problems faced by Dyslexic persons, and make note-making and scheduling easier for them.
There are very few schools catering to children with special learning needs, and most people are not aware of them. Often such children are branded dumb or lazy, instead of being understood and supported. Parents either hesitate to ask for help, or do not know who to ask. I felt there is a need to design solutions to make life easier for persons with Dyslexia.
To understand the problem statement more clearly, let us take an example from the Hindi movie 'Taare Zameen Par'. The protagonist, Ishaan, is an eight-year old boy who struggles to read or write or pay attention. He cannot comprehend written words, and gets his spellings and pronunciations wrong. He also has difficulty remembering to do things. His genius creative mind is hidden behind his Dyslexic condition.
Now, there is no known cure for Dyslexia. Such people need help from special tutors and family members to manage even normal activities like reading, comprehending, writing, speaking out, remembering and so on. In spite of learning how to live with it, as they grow older, they continue to face these problems in the competitive world.
As a part of my primary research, I went through some of the research papers and handbooks related to dyslexic people. Since my target users and their family can be sensitive about it, I wanted to make sure I ask the right questions. By researching I identified several problems faced by dyslexic people. For my project, I chose to focus on some specific areas of reading and writing. I conducted interviews of three tutors who cater to children with special learning needs and two persons working with the dyslexic. The aim was to validate my assumptions and to discover any other problems they might be facing.
The key findings from these interviews are given below
I developed a user persona with the data I collected during my user research. This was to remind me all the time who am I designing this tool for, and with that persona in mind, to help me make decisions at various stages.
User workflow was done to decide the primary features of the app. Multiple features should not confuse the user. Here, I decided to make note-making the primary feature, as it all started with the problems related to reading and writing.
I went ahead to make low fidelity screens, and prototyping them to proceed for user testing. It was crucial to get feedback from the real users before proceeding for the final design.
I tested the low fidelity wireframes with two users, and given below were their two main concerns, which were not in my consideration set initially.
The text size is fixed in this and it is small for me, I am not able to read properly.
Not everyone is comfortable with a fixed font size and text alignment. So one of the solutions is to give the user some sort of control over the text characteristics, keeping in mind that too many options might confuse or distract.
What should I do if I complete a task? How do I know if I had completed the task already?
The schedule card is a fixed view-only type card. The user expects a feedback to separate the finished tasks from the unfinished ones. I also realized that the appreciation angle, which I had discovered during the research phase, can be incorporated here. When the user gives an input of completed task, a dialogue box can appreciate her, and if not, it can encourage her to complete it.
For final screens, I chose a shade of Royal Blue as the primary color as its associated with 'calmness'.
During the iterations, I made several changes to the art board I had started with, while duplicating only a few of them. I should have preserved all my iterations to understand the thinking behind it while viewing later.
I had made a few assumptions about the problems faced by the user. But due to the survey, all the assumptions were validated and at the same time, I discovered more pain points to be solved. Also, the data gathered during the survey was very helpful in making user informed choices while creating the flow.
