Doodle Tales

Yvonne Ng, Britney Phan, Alokik Kinra, Ariel Lin (me)

A fun and interactive storytelling app that encourages kids to explore and create their own unique stories.

Doodle Tales is an innovative storytelling app that blends the creative fun of Mad Libs with the excitement of "choose your own adventure" books, along with games like ScribbleNauts for kids.

With the magic of AI, our app transforms children's drawings into captivating stories. Watch as their artwork comes to life on the screen, and let their creativity guide the plot. Every choice they make alters the course of the story, ensuring a unique and engaging adventure every time!

Live Demo

Source Code

Initial Concept Sketches

Our initial design process started off with each team member generating 10 random sketches for an app geared toward kids and/or their parents, resulting in a rich pool of 40 initial concepts.

When brainstorming ideas for the concept sketches, my focus was to find ideas that captured my childhood aspirations, things I wished I had back then but were not readily available. The gallery below contains my 10 initial sketches.

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Kids News

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Kids Browser

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Choice of Concepts

As a group, we collectively selected 1 sketch from each member's 10 sketches, choosing 4 intriguing ideas to explore further. These concepts included "Test Maker" by Yvonne, "Kids Diary Book" by Ariel, "Soccer Aiming Game" by Britney, and "Prime Number Shooting Game" by Alokik. After careful consideration, we decided to focus our efforts on refining Yvonne's "Test Maker" and Ariel's "Kids Diary Book" as they resonated most with the team.

Refinement

Stage 1

During our refinement design process, each team member composed of 5-10 refined sketches based on our two chosen concepts.

Selected refined sketches are shown in the gallery below.

Variation - Kids Diary Book (Britney)

Kids can add multiple entries throughout the day, and each entry is color-coated based on the mood selected.

Variation - Kids Diary Book (Britney)

An AI buddy that actively engages with users, asking about their day, encouraging them to write entries, and offering prompts for inspiration.

Variation - Kids Diary Book (Alokik)

Kids can sort and add images or videos to their entries, while automatically generates songs based on their experiences. Additionally, a dedicated notes page offers a space for jotting down quick thoughts and ideas.

Variation / Detail - Kids Diary Book (Ariel)

Gives kids a thought-provoking / interesting random question with each entry to inspire creativity and self-expression; enables kids to choose who can view their entries; adds parental dashboard and feedback entry details.

Variation - Kids Diary Book (Yvonne)

Kids have the option to use speech-to-text to effortlessly create diary entries, which can then be auto-generated into visually engaging postcards; or alternatively, they can choose to draw sketches, which the app can convert into text entries.

Variation / Detail - Test Maker (Britney)

Kids can input either text or images and select their preferred difficulty level.

Variation - Test Maker (Alokik)

Evolves into a comprehensive learning platform. Kids can now explore, practice, and test themselves on a wide range of subjects with adjustable difficulty levels.

Variation - Test Maker (Ariel)

Users can tailor tests to their specific needs inputting various question types (image, text, voice) and selecting output variations (print or game), also users can easily adjust the number of questions generated.

Detail - Test Maker (Yvonne)

Use of the Cloud Vision API for automatic question detection, the Wolfram Problem Generator for generating additional questions, and Google Minerva for solving and checking solutions.

Yvonne sparked an exciting revelation during our group discussion. She proposed a concept that beautifully combines the AI capabilities of "Test Maker" with the interactive charm of "Kids Diary Book". This fresh idea piqued our collective interest and became our focal point.

With this newfound direction in mind, our team channeled the efforts into sketching out refined concepts based on Yvonne's brilliant idea!

Stage 2

Variation / Detail - Combined (Yvonne)

Kids draw a sketch based on a random prompt and make choices for words and settings, AI then transforms their input into an image and a story.

Variation - Combined (Yvonne)

Kids can input notes or lyrics, and the AI composes a unique song based on their inputs.

Variation - Combined (Britney)

Kids describe their day in three words, create drawings corresponding to those words, and then AI generates a personalized postcard based on these inputs.

Variation - Combined (Alokik)

AI takes kids drawing and choices to generate a story or a comic; adds audible feature.

Variation - Combined (Ariel)

Allows AI to enhance user sketches and combines selected image to produce an integrated result.

Final Design & Implementation

Building upon Yvonne's compelling concept, we incorporated some key enhancements. We introduced a text-to-speech feature, allowing kids to not only read but also listen to the stories generated by the app. Additionally, we've introduced an album feature, which automatically saves the generated images and stories, allowing kids to cherish and revisit their creative adventures.

For our app implementation, we hosted our web app on Glitch, employing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for coding. We integrated the T2l Adaptor SDXL to transform sketches into images and OpenAI to convert user prompts into kids-friendly stories.

Contribution

As for contribution, I initially proposed the "Kids Diary Book" concept sketch, which the group embraced for its focus on kids' interaction. This concept then inspired the fusion of AI elements from "Test Maker", leading to our final design, "Doodle Tales". Additionally, I suggested and incorporated the album/memory feature from the same concept, enhancing the project's overall appeal.

On the technical side, I coded the app's skeleton and helped implement essential APIs.

Resources