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SMALL BIG DREAMER AT HOME

CLIENT:
NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE (NGS)

TIMELINE:
3 months → completed in 4–6 weeks

ROLE:​

  • UI UX DESign

  • Game Design

  • Product Lead

PROJECT TYPE:

  • WEBSITE

  • INTERACTIVE GAMES

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Project Context

Bringing festival into Living Rooms

Pivoting a physical festival into a mobile-first digital experience in just 4-6 weeks, with interactive games, artist stories, and family activities designed for children aged 6-12 and their parents.

Problem Statement

The biennial children’s art festival Small Big Dreamers faced the challenge of COVID-19 lockdowns. The event had to pivot from an on-site experience into an engaging digital format — within an extremely short timeline.

The Goal

The team had to reimagine the physical Small Big Dreamers festival as Singapore’s first-ever online art festival — a mobile-first digital experience filled with games, stories, and family activities.

My Responsibility

  • Concept proposal

  • Experience mapping & information architecture

  • UX/UI design and prototyping

  • Game concept direction

  • User testing with children

  • Iteration and hand-off to development

My Role

As Product Lead, I guided the full process and coordinated with stakeholders and developers to deliver under a compressed schedule.

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Reserach Insights

Kids have shorter attention spans and avoid reading long text. Animated graphics, sound feedback, and large visual targets sustained their engagement.

Secondary

Parents/Families

  • Appreciate educational value presented through play.

  • Prefer mobile-first design that works seamlessly on shared family devices.

  • Want clear navigation and fast access to content.

Primary

Children (6–12 years)

  • Curious, visual, and spontaneous — they explore with instinct, not instruction.

  • Attracted to visuals over text, often skipping written guidance.

  • Engage better with motion, sound, and feedback.

  • Short attention spans require fast, rewarding interactions.

Users & Research

Designing for kids and the families who guide them

Creating for an audience of both children and parents meant finding the right balance between simplicity, playfulness, and accessibility.

DESIGN Challenge

Translating tactile joy to mobile

The challenge was to quickly adapt tactile experience into intuitive, screen‑based interactions, ensuring that the product remained performant and easy to navigate.

Core Challange

How might we preserve the joy of discovery and creation inherent in the gallery floor experience through a screen?

Constraints:

  • Urgent pivot to digital; delivery in 4–6 weeks

  • Remote, cross‑functional collaboration

  • Adapting existing visuals and artwork for web

Navigation

One-click entry points with bold visuals and gentle motion to guide intuitively — no reading required.

Copy and Content

Short, bite‑sized captions and prompts written for kids with a parent‑friendly tone.

Mobile‑First

Thumb‑friendly controls, compressed content, and progressive content disclosure suited for family devices.

Scalable Design

Modular content structure for easy content updates for stakeholders.

Strategy & Approach

Small touches, big difference

Below are the key focus area when working on design

1. Research & Mapping

  • Observed children’s behavior and visual instincts.

  • Defined learning goals and aligned them with digital behaviors.

  • Identified user groups — kids and families.

2. Concept Development

  • Established pillars: Engage · Educate · Explore.

  • Proposed a map-based microsite linking featured themed zones, games, and artists.

  • Prioritized simplicity, feedback, and visual storytelling to sustain curiosity.

3. Wireframes & Prototyping

  • Built low-fidelity flows in emphasizing one-tap navigation.

  • Used motion cues and color for guidance instead of text.

  • Validated concepts with client reviews before high-fidelity design.

4. User Testing & Rapid Iterations

  • UAT with kids to observe navigation behavior and task completion.

  • UAT feedback from clients .

  • Refined layouts and interactions to improve engagement.

5. Build & QA

  • Worked closely with web & game developers to ensure performance, visual consistency, and cross-device stability.

  • Delivered a modular, mobile-first site, scalable for future updates.

PROCESS

Ship fast, keep the fun

The project followed a child-centered design process — guided by research, iteration, and collaboration. Each phase focused on turning complex educational goals into playful, intuitive interactions.

**For six weeks, we ran daily agile check-ins with stakeholders and developers to keep collaboration tight and delivery on track.

Design, Iterate AND Prototype

Adventure, not instruction

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Design Highlights

Each zone acted as a mini adventure – encouraging discovery, play and creativity without overwhelming children.

Adventure Map

A colorful, map-style hero image with five visual entry points, large touch targets, and instant visual feedback for intuitive navigation.

Interactive Engagement

Doodle‑style art, motion cues, and minimal copy to fit how kids actually explore – tap first, read later.

Artist Studio

Scroll‑to‑zoom storytelling space that reveals artwork details through bite-sized explanations and animations. Each featured piece pairs with a game in Play & Discover

Game-based Learning

A suite of lightweight, web-friendly mini-games inspired by artistic techniques — light, color, shadow, sound, and perspective — transforming traditional art principles into hands-on digital play

OUTCOME and impact

Engagement at home, recognition abroad

The microsite successfully reimagined the physical festival for at-home audiences and received international recognition.

High Engagement

During launch phase, kids explored for an average of 4.5 minutes per visit

Scalable Design

A modular framework and CMS made ongoing content updates fast and effortless.

High Return Visits

1 in 3 users returned to play games or explore new activities.

Mobile Performance

Optimized for low bandwidth, the site maintained under 2s load time across devices.

Ease of Use

80% of sessions completed by children without adult help.

Recognition

Featured by The Straits Times and shortlisted for Best International Digital Activity by Kids in Museums (UK).

Reflection & LEarnings

Built for play, guided by instinct.

This project reaffirmed that great UX thrives on clarity, creativity, and constraint. Working within tight deadlines sharpened my focus — proving that simplicity isn’t limitation, it’s precision.

Designing for children meant seeing through their lens: reducing text, amplifying motion, and building experiences that invite instinctive play. When everything worked as intended, the technology faded — leaving only curiosity and joy.

Working on this project brought genuine fun and joy. At times, it felt like I was a kid again, creating something just for the love of it.

Key Takeaways

Lessons beyond the launch

Designing for children taught me that clarity and play can coexist — and that the best interactions should feel effortless, not engineered. The same design choices that help kids explore freely also make products more accessible, intuitive, and inclusive for everyone.

  • Design for instinct, not instruction—adapt to user’s natural behavior.

  • Motion and color communicate faster than text.

  • Turn constraints into clarity. Time pressure sharpened focus on what truly mattered.

  • Design for delight, not just function. Playful interactions connect with users of all ages.

  • Build modular systems so content grows easily with user needs.

AIRPORT OPERATION SIMULATION CENTRE

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