Diboo

Lead Design, UX Research, Front-End Development

An educational platform aimed at developing children’s creative skills and stimulating the imagination. I worked on the project as Lead designer, helping create from scratch the platform’s brand and identity as well as its main physical and digital avenues. I was also responsible for the platform’s front end development as well as training and managing the project’s design team.

The Brand

Diboo was born out of a partnership between Descomplica, Brazil’s largest remote learning platform and Daniel Azulay, a popular Illustrator, Comic Book artist and Educator that got notoriety in the country as a TV host in the 90’s. The goal was to create an online platform to provide all sorts of tools and educational materials to kids at different ages, as well as a platform for them to submit work and grow as a creative community. Besides these main guidelines, everything else from the brand to the strategy and platform’s main features were to be decided.

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The first steps included some meetings with key stakeholders, to talk scope and available resources. That was followed by some benchmark research, as well as an early field research, to narrow down and learn more about kids on the targeted age groups. That also allowed us to start relationships with some early adopter parents. Those relationships turned out to be crucial later on, to test new concepts and features.

As the initial research evolved, so did the work on the brand, which aimed at inspiring playfulness, ease-of-access and a diy attitude, while also relating trustworthiness and knowledgeability to their parents. For that, it employed a variety of colors, round shapes, bold type and overall playfulness.

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rgb(235, 174, 42)

rgb(88, 158, 91, 1)

rgb(43, 139, 168)

rgb(229, 92, 93)

The Brand

Diboo was born out of a partnership between Descomplica, Brazil’s largest remote learning platform and Daniel Azulay, a popular Illustrator, Comic Book artist and Educator that got notoriety in the country as a TV host in the 90’s. The goal was to create an online platform to provide all sorts of tools and educational materials to kids at different ages, as well as a platform for them to submit work and grow as a creative community. Besides these main guidelines, everything else from the brand to the strategy and platform’s main features were to be decided.

1

rgb(126, 105, 165)

rgb(235, 174, 42)

rgb(88, 158, 91, 1)

rgb(43, 139, 168)

rgb(229, 92, 93)

OSCursos

HEADING

Raleway Black

Desenhe como um expert se puder vencer A MONTANHA

HEADING

Raleway Medium

Quadrinhos
PARAGRAPH

Raleway Bold

Yeah, but John, if The Pirates of the Caribbean breaks down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists. My dad once told me, laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and I'll give you something to cry about you little bastard!

PARAGRAPH

Raleway Regular

BRandING AND concept

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World Building

The challenge of building the site itself was that of attending multiple audiences simultaneously, without letting one group’s experience interfere with the other. Through a multitude of usability tests and one-on-one interviews, we uncovered key usability aspects, such as that while younger children needed to have clearer clues, more straightforward navigation and little to no reliance on text, older children were more prone to fluctuate to more complex features that allowed them compete and connect with others. At the same tim, parents needed to be able to be easily directed to more administrative functions such as support, account and plan settings, whether by their kids or while investigating on their own.

2World Building

The challenge of building the site itself was that of attending multiple audiences simultaneously, without letting one group’s experience interfere with the other. Through a multitude of usability tests and one-on-one interviews, we uncovered key usability aspects, such as that while younger children needed to have clearer clues, more straightforward navigation and little to no reliance on text, older children were more prone to fluctuate to more complex features that allowed them compete and connect with others. At the same tim, parents needed to be able to be easily directed to more administrative functions such as support, account and plan settings, whether by their kids or while investigating on their own.

To allow a then small team to get as fast as possible to a functioning iteration that could test the premises adopted, scrum methodology was employed. The team would weekly evaluate results, discuss action and redirect effort, while frequently testing new features and ideas. New features would be originally presented as low fidelity mockups that could be created in a smaller amount of time and help focus the discussion. As more base aspects of each new layout or page would reach consensus, the mockups would gradually become more high-fidelity.

The solution the was then to create Diboo as a fantasy universe, which would wrap the whole structure of the site and create multiple easy to follow narrative analogies, with video classes embedded on a ‘climb a mountain’ challenge and artistic resources to be found deep underwater. The platform would also promote frequent creative challenges with large amounts of user generated content. That would all be coupled by a more standard set of administrative features that while partaking the overall spirit of the platform, were overall kept as straightforward and intuitive as possible.

To allow a then small team to get as fast as possible to a functioning iteration that could test the premises adopted, scrum methodology was employed. The team would weekly evaluate results, discuss action and redirect effort, while frequently testing new features and ideas. New features would be originally presented as low fidelity mockups that could be created in a smaller amount of time and help focus the discussion. As more base aspects of each new layout or page would reach consensus, the mockups would gradually become more high-fidelity.

WORLD BUILDING

Multiple artifacts such as user personas and website flow charts were built, as the project evolved, as tools to facilitate communication between different parts of the team and create common ground during meetings.

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Expanding
the Platform

The growth of Diboo came two-fold: In one level, higher interest in the features offered by the site gave us space to design and develop more labor intensive features such a whole set of mini-games as well new the addition of new video classes with an ever growing number of creative professionals. From a bigger focus on Illustration, Diboo was now expanding into different areas such as animation, collage, puppeteering and many others.

The second vector of growth came in the shape of a stronger community and a growing number of events and types of engagement with the audience. Field research in schools gave us the insight that directing our user generated content dynamics with suggested themes drove more engagement than just purely opening a channel for submissions.

The periodic creative challenges then expanded into full drawing competitions, with open votes and a weekly theme for the kids to elaborate upon. These saw a higher engagement of the kids not only on the platform but also within their own families and friend groups, as many kids would effectively lobby their household to gather support for their submissions. Some events, such as a Christmas special theme bumped up submissions by the hundreds. The rewards would vary from having the most voted drawings being displayed on the site to actual gifts like drawing material and coloring books.

Aside from the growth on the platform itself, the team also started generating a high volume of collaterals on social media platforms, with a major focus on Facebook. The strategy for that platform was mainly to target parents - since a lot of the children would still not have their own accounts. The messaging focused more heavily on the figure of Daniel Azulay - who has a high name recognition among the then parenting generation - as well as on sharing a number of games that were popular at the time the adults were kids themselves. These games would all be framed in a way to encourage people to play with their children away from the computer, in such a way positioning Diboo as not only an end on itself but also as a platform trying to bring together children and their parents.

EXPANDING THE PLATFORM
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