UX/UI
VUI Design
Product Design
Timeline
9 weeks
Tools
Voiceflow
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe AfterEffects
Collaborators
Ana Bungag
Daria Pronomareva
Tomo, your new fun and reliable friend!
Tomo is a VUI educational toy that brings learning and delight to children, and peace of mind
to parents.
A voice user interface robot toy for children
How might we create a toy robot that can teach, make learning fun, and provide support to help build structure in a child's life?
A voice user interface robot toy for children
Solution
Create a voice user interface and an educational toy to teach children how to read, play imaginary interactive games, and tell them bedtime stories. While also giving parents peace of mind with an accompanying app and the ability to set lessons and parental controls.
Research Process
Understanding how children learn
Children have many different learning styles, such as kinesthetic, auditory, and more. Play is essential to learning for children ages 3 through 11, and it provides the opportunity to explore the world, interact with others, express and control emotions, develop symbolic and problem-solving abilities, and practice emerging skills. We considered all of this when coming up with the concept for Tomo.
Market Analysis
As a team, we knew it was essential to do market analysis. We made a graph of who our competitors were and what we could do to set ourselves apart from them. VUIs aren't new to the toy world, but it was crucial in our research to know what was already on the market.
Personas
Understanding what toys parents bought their children was vital in creating Tomo. We wanted to know why and what kind of toys parents purchased and for what purposes. Whether it be for educational or entertainment reasons, a survey was sent out to parents asking questions, which helped us create our ideal personas. Below is just a couple of versions of the personas we created.
Ideation
Brand Pillars
From the MoSCoW prioritization, we were able to develop our brand pillars. Parents can trust our brand because we ensure that parents have complete control of Tomo within the Tomo app and that our VUI
robot toy is fun and safe for their children.
Design
Creating Tomo
As a team, we all collaborated on Tomo's design. When designing Tomo, we wanted to keep accessibility in mind and make Tomo easy for any user to use. Each team member did their sketches of what Tomo should look like.
We combined all our sketches, took attributes we liked from each idea, and came up with the final version of Tomo. Tomo comes in four different fun colors!
Prototyping
Tomo App
We also created an accompanying mobile application for Tomo. We wanted parents to always have peace of mind and parental control over Tomo. The parent can set up specific lessons and a time limit on Tomo usage within the app.
Voice User Interfaces
My primary role in this project was to work with Voiceflow, which helps teams design, prototype, and build conversational assistants. I built a small user flow and a short wizard of oz test in the nine weeks we had for the project. I continued working on Tomo for six weeks after the original project ended and continued my work in Voiceflow to run an extended user test with the targeted demographic. The user test result was successful to a point, the amount of utterances needed to make a VUI work is outstanding. I realized I would need more than six weeks to create a successful, error-free test. The child who was able to participate in user testing was very engaged and stated, "Wait, can we keep going?" as the test finished.
Outcome
A promotional video was made to introduce Tomo. In creating this project, extensive knowledge of Voice User Interfaces was gained, and the ability to work collaboratively within a small team was successful. If Tomo were to keep going forward, there would be more in-depth branding and user testing.