The Project

The Wonderful World of Lottie Dottie Chicken

Lottie Dottie Chicken is one of the largest Google Assistant Actions in Brazil, currently with over 400,000 monthly users. It has a global following and has been translated into three languages, gaining a presence on every continent. The project involved extensive usability research for children, and the Action's design also posed the challenge of creating interactions that support the voice experience. The product's mechanics would be simple: a menu offering nine activities. After completing each one, the child can repeat it or choose another to explore.

The Challenge

Young Users

Explain to me as if I were a two-year-old? How do you create intuitive interfaces for pre-literate users still developing their verbal skills? The main challenge of the project was to create an immersive and interactive experience that would synergize with the primary voice interface. At the same time, the result had to offer a high-quality experience that would retain the attention of two to three-year-olds without disturbing their parents.

The Process

From theory to experience

We began with desktop research on best usability practices for children in this age group, which primarily involved concepts developed by Trine Falbe, Arvid Bräne, and Piaget. In parallel, we also conducted benchmark research on apps, websites, and games for children under 4. The insights informed definitions of buttons, animations, interactions, and layouts. The emotional engagement with the characters and the low level of abstraction for understanding signs were some of the discoveries that later helped define the menus and functional flows. Another important activity was an in-depth analysis of the previous product's metrics. One of the advantages of redesign projects is the ability to map the pitfalls and challenges revealed by the analysis of the numbers. The main KPI was to reduce the percentage of children who reached the menu and didn't choose any activity.

The Solution

Fundamentals and Collaboration

The final product was guided by several premises: large click areas, use of characters as interactive elements, high error tolerance ("forgiving interfaces"), interaction through gestures that didn't require much precision from children, and very fast value delivery. Using the metaphor of the Little Spotted Hen's house, the child "enters" the room, where the characters present the activities through short, fun animations. They are then encouraged to interact with the movement of the animated clickable characters. Each activity presents a different setting, including the colors, so that young users notice the change in environment and, with repeated use, begin to remember the activities also through the color palette.

Results

Enter the world of Galinha Pintadinha

The Action saw improvements in its average session time, its penetration in English and Spanish speaking countries, and its overall audience. The work didn't end with the launch of the new version. After the launch, we spent about six months analyzing the metrics and evolving the solution. We noticed, for example, that some activities had much higher retention than others, and we began positioning them better in the menu. Another ongoing improvement is the handling of "fallbacks," the system's behavior when it doesn't "understand" what the child intended to do. In this Action, this problem is more pronounced due to the speech and comprehension difficulties of this age group.