Disney-Byju’s Early Learn is a narrative-led learning product featuring a whopping 35 Disney Intellectual Properties (IPs). It was made in a collaboration between Disney Publishing Worldwide & Indian edtech startup Byju’s.

I led design with the Disney IPs, creating magical storytelling that stayed true to the quality, consistency, and brand of these 35 Disney IPs. I worked on grades 1-3, ages 6-9.

The main Disney-related systems are

• Narratives with core problems - each learning objective is introduced by a difficult situation that a Disney character is facing, which can only be solved if the kids help

• Interactive exercises - gamified practice sessions based on the Disney narratives

• Stickerbook rewards - Disney content earned when hitting learning goals

• Magical world map - different entry points, with different Disney characters, to different groups of learning objectives

• Miscellaneous app touchpoints - player profiles, onboarding

I was already up to speed on classic Disney, a lifelong fan. The huge challenge was translating that into a usable, professional skill, and in getting the rest of the team up to speed.

In my role as Creative Experience Designer, I balanced game and narrative design with an IP-first approach. I had to:

• Design for a Disney rule: Plausible deniability

  In the big-wig negotiations between Disney & Byju’s it was agreed that the characters would never actually appear “in world” because the app world also had non-Disney characters. This set the narrative team at a serious disadvantage because we were hoping for a more immersive experience, but compromises had to be made. Some of the ways we maintained a distance between the “app world” and the "Disney world” was

  • Visual separators - putting characters in holding shapes on non-Disney background, making our world map feature stylized character game pieces instead of the characters themselves

  • “Imagination” qualifiers - instead of suggesting that characters actually required help, we instead asked players to imagine that it they could help the characters.

  Amazingly, this worked for everyone. I still wish we had the original, intended experience, but this design got the app off the ground.

• Construct relationships between IPs, business goals, and learning objectives

  I created a spread of IPs across the app that would speak to market research on IP popularity.

  It also had to speak to learning goals - IPs can’t be used at whim, they have to have plausible relationships with the subject matter. Keeping characters on-brand was good for Disney and good for narrative immersion.

  Between this, and studying the learning objectives themselves (I now know what a “schwa” sound is), we found Disney narratives that had usable art assets. Then we could get to story telling.

• Develop World Bibles and asset resources

  35 is a lot of IPs. I studied the source material, and all canon spin-off content, to figure out characters (motivations, relationships, histories, outfits); locations (geographies, histories, foliage, time period); key storylines and iconic moments. Disney was really vast and also really specific, so our knowledge had to be as well.

  Disney also has about 100 years of art assets, and those shared with us were digitized but untagged. I worked with production to set up a cross-referencing system that would support faster & more efficient narrative design.

• Hire & train a team of 30+ designers

  Some nerds are born. Others are made.

  I tried to create an environment of joyful creativity, collaborative and positive feedbacking, and strict deadlines.

• Writing & reviewing with Disney

  My team storyboarded the narratives & interactive exercises, all the way down to writing SFX & VFX cues for the animators and UX cues for the devs. Of course, there was extensive review, both internally and with Disney. I never ceased to be amazed at how well they knew their IP and the details they could catch (like the time they noticed that the sky in our Moana narrative looked like it had Northern Hemisphere star views, while Moana was from a southern, Polynesian island).

• Overall app experience guidance

  The reward feature, UI, UX, and overall app delight had to reflect the feel of the Disney brand and each IP. Particularly enjoyable and challenging was working with the art team to design the world map.

Looking back, I’m glad I got to work with such a fantastic group of people. And now I know the difference between pie-eyed Mickey and the new, modern Mickey. Do you?