Science at your fingertips. Bringing Stephen Hawking's thought experiments to life in an interactive rich experience.

// Problem

Today, Penguin Random House has a collection of the richest content in book form, but given the emerging appearance of technology such as the iPhone, iPad, VR and others, consumers are spending more time on their phones over books. Compound that with the decline of interest in science, a lot of the science content published was not engaging readers as it did previously.

// Opportunity

This was a chance for PRH to reimagine the way that people engaged with book and science content. Although technology has captivated people's attention, it's a perfect place to bring content to life like never before. It's about meeting people where they are and this is a great opportunity to engage people with rich context experiences in science.

// Personas

The audience for this product was geared toward tweens. Kids between the ages of 8-12. We wanted to introduce to this age group as they were actively learning science in school and the opportunity to ignite even more excitement for the cosmos, learning theories from one of the greats in cosmology.

// Snapshots

The focus of Snapshots of the Universe was to bring the content from Stephen Hawking's books to life in an interactive, learning-rich way. We pulled different thought experiments from A Brief History of Time and The Universe in a Nutshell. This spaned the theories of relativity, gravitational forces, Galileo, to time traveling.

// My role

I was the lead UX Designer on the project. I worked with PRH and our team to translate the key science into an engaging, value-driven learning experience on the iPad. I drove the translation and conception of the book content for the core UX. The initial app launch consisted of 8 thought experiments.

Directional UX