Case Study
Kintales
Children's Education • Mobile App • 0 to 1 Product
Overview
Turning a picture book into a gateway for learning — beyond the last page
Kintales is a mobile app designed to help families get more from the picture books they already own. Rather than replacing reading, it extends it — giving parents interactive prompts that spark curiosity, creativity, and learning across subjects like counting, art, and science, all rooted in the story their child just heard.
I joined as a product designer working under a lead designer, contributing across the full design process — from research and wireframing through to final UI and prototyping — helping bring the app from concept to a shipped product with thousands of books available at launch.
Role
Product Designer
Team
Designer, Developers, Marketing, Founder, Educator
Timeline
Under 1 year
The Brief
A 0 to 1 product built around a simple but overlooked insight
Picture books are rich learning tools — but most families only use them one way. A child hears the story, turns the last page, and moves on. The characters, the scenes, the counting opportunities, the science questions hiding in the illustrations — all of it goes untapped.
The founder's vision was to change that. Kintales would give parents a structured but playful way to extend any reading session into a broader learning moment — without requiring any special expertise or preparation. The app would do the heavy lifting: curating prompts written by educators, organised by subject, and tied directly to the books families already loved.
Design mandate
Design mandate
Description
Problem
The platform couldn't support how customers actually purchased.
Canadawide Scientific had grown beyond its original digital infrastructure. As online buying became the norm, the platform's limitations compounded into real business costs.
Label
Poor SEO and product visibility
Description
Label
Rigid browsing and navigation
Description
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Limited marketing capability
Description
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No scalable design foundation
Description
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Outdated B2B purchasing workflows
Description
Team & Responsibilities
Sole designer working directly with a development team
There was no PM, no design director, and no external agency. Every design decision — from research and strategy to final UI and QA — was owned by me.
Before State
Process
Research built incrementally from four sources
Rather than starting with a full redesign brief, I built understanding incrementally — combining direct research with continuous observation of a live platform in active use.
Constraints
Solution
Five focused improvements across discovery, workflows, and systems
Phase 1
Product discovery & conversion
Description
Phase 2
B2B purchasing workflows
Description
Phase 3
Content & marketing flexibility
Description
Phase 4
Category organisation
Description
Phase 5
Design system & documentation
Description
Design Decisions & Tradeoffs
Iteration
Results
A 0 to 1 product shipped within a year — with thousands of books ready at launch
Kintales launched on iOS and Android with a library of thousands of picture books, each paired with educator-written prompts across four learning subjects. The product went from concept to shipped app within a single year — involving a cross-functional team of designers, developers, educators, and marketing.
Label
1000s
Description
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4
Description
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0 to 1
Description
Learning
Designing for two users at once requires choosing one to lead
The biggest challenge on Kintales was not visual — it was deciding whose experience to optimise for when parent and child needs pulled in different directions. A child-first UI risked alienating parents. A parent-first UI risked feeling cold in a moment meant to be warm and playful.
The resolution was to design for parents as the operator and children as the audience. The interface itself was clean and readable for the adult holding the device. The content — prompts, book covers, visual language — was warm and child-appropriate. Once that frame was established, design decisions became much cleaner to make.
Working with an educator changed how I thought about content design. The prompts were not just text — they were the product. Getting the wording right mattered as much as getting the layout right.
This project also taught me how to work within a team as a contributor rather than a sole owner. Taking direction from a lead designer while still bringing independent thinking to the work — knowing when to push back and when to execute — is a different skill from being the only designer in the room. Both are valuable, and Kintales gave me real experience in collaborative design.