The Struggles of Storybird

Storybird is a unique language arts tool that uses “illustrations to inspire students to write stories.” Storybird is marketed towards elementary school teachers. The interface contains a plethora of standards based writing curriculum that engages students with age-appropriate video tutorials, writing challenges, quizzes, and more. Although the curriculum and writing activities are visually appealing, this interface is pricey. Users are given a free 7 day trial in which they can write their own picture stories, take the reading challenges, and explore the various other facets of the interface. However after 7 days, users are unable to complete the activities they were working on during the time frame of their free trial and every feature becomes locked. Rather, the screen below will repeatedly appear, where users will be given the option to sign up for $8.99/month or $4.99/month if they buy membership for a year.

I believe the decision to provide only a 7 day free trial is odd, since most interfaces (e.g. a netflix account) in any genre typically allow users a month long trial! And with a complex interface such as storybird, which contains so many different activities and features, the short span of the free trial is counterintuitive: it is simply not enough time for users to explore the entire site and decide whether a subscription would be a worthy investment.

Because storybird is a resource for teaching language arts, it allows users to write their own stories. Users have the option of writing picture books, longform stories, comics, flash fiction, and poetry. Students simply choose which type of story they would like to write and choose background images to accompany the text they type onto the storybook page. The images provided to users are high quality artworks and drawings submitted by other users. While this system for choosing illustrations for your story tosses aside copyright or stolen image concerns, the choice of artwork is consequently limited. Users can not choose any image from the internet that they feel will best suit their story — for instance, a scene from a horror movie or a massacre to match the gore of the storyline — but must simply stick with the illustrations provided by the interface. And oftentimes, the illustrations and artwork provided by storybird all appear similar in nature: kiddy and colorful. While this may certainly appeal to their demographic, the lack of surreal or adult artwork stifles the creativity of mature writers.

Because of the childish illustrations provided, I decided to create a simple picture book in order to assess the usability of storybird. The dashboard for framing a picture book was easy to navigate and thorough. Users are given a blank white square in which they can add text by simply clicking on the page (thus creating a textbox). Furthermore, adding images to each page of your story is simple. Users are given a list of artists who have submitted their pictures free to use on the site. Once you choose an artist, a list of their artwork is present on the left and right sides of the screen, with the blank canvas in the middle. Users can simply drag the artwork of their choice onto either the left or right side of the blank canvas. This method of choosing artwork for your project is simple and seamless: you do not have to upload it or search through a catalogue, you must simply drag it onto the page. Furthermore, by allowing you to add an image to a single side of the canvas, the interface conveniently leaves room on the opposite side of the canvas for the textbook, emulating the structure of a real picture book in which one page is preserved for the text and the other for illustrations. The point is, the interface was thus far professional and the structural details it allowed me to control made it feel like I was designing an actual storybook.

Once I had a picture of a rabbit chosen for my illustration, I proceeded to write the text on the opposite side of the page. I was pleasantly surprised to find that storybird did not just offer the popular Quicksand or Caroni fonts that are atypical of children’s stories. Rather, on the upper right hand corner, users can find an option to “Change Font” which will reveal a diverse list of fonts ranging from Arial to Verdana. There were 10 different font options! Essentially, storybird users have a wide choice of fonts to choose from to best fit their needs. Additionally, storybird also provided other typical features found in other writing interfaces, such as the option to change text color, bold, or italicize. While storybird provided these features, I was a bit surprised to see there were no tools to control the alignment of my text. Rather, everything I typed into the text box automatically centered itself which may appear aesthetically pleasing, but was ultimately limiting. With everything typed formatting itself in the dead center of the page, I could not add an indentation and include two separate paragraph chunks on a single page. Thus, while providing some basic features typical of any writing interface, such as allowing to control font, color, or italicization, storybird missed out on a few other important features which would have further allowed users to control how much writing they can squeeze into a page and how they would want to frame it (e.g. left or right aligned, bullet points, justified, etc).

While working on “The Jolly Rabbit” I also stumbled upon a few other inconsistencies that made the interface even harder to work with. Firstly, the interface does not allow you to correct the format in which you insert an image. I was hoping to adhere to the structure I had used on the first page of my story — an illustration on the right of the page and the text on the left. However, when I was dragging an image to the second page of my story, I accidentally pasted it to the center of the page (not on the shadowy placeholder available on either the left or right sides). In doing so, I was stuck with my chosen illustration on the center of the page and with no way to remove it, which meant I had to delete the page and remake it. Because many users will be first timers when using storybird, one would expect that the process of moving around an illustration on a page would be seamless and easy. Because it was a minor error in placement, I expected to be able to drag the illustration with my cursor back and forth. However this was not an option, making the interface even less user friendly.

While frustrated over having to remake the pages of my story when the illustrations were accidentally placed in the center, I was also irritated to discover just how much more limited my selection in illustrations were. As you can see from the images above, the artwork I can use for my story was limited to the two columns on the left and right. By only having access to the artwork of one artist, my choice of meaningful illustrations was severely limited. I was writing a story about a happy rabbit, but there were only three different illustrations with rabbits. This meant that either I kept using the same three images throughout my whole story (which would make no sense considering different events occurred throughout the plot) or I add random new characters/elements to my story just so I have an excuse to use different illustrations. By going with the latter, my creativity was extremely stifled. I could no longer focus the entirety of my story on the rabbit’s journey simply because there were not enough relevant images to represent the different events occurring. Rather, I had to resort to changing my story altogether just so I could use different illustrations. I could have also resorted to using no images at all after exhausting the three rabbit images provided, but a children’s storybook is incomplete without pictures. It was utterly disappointing that an interface dedicated to story writing would have users contemplate such tough decisions.

My experiences with storybird suggest that the interface was not user friendly or accessible. It is important to note that storybird is a vibrant and colorful website which aims to inspire kids to write. The reading activities, language arts quizzes, and fun games certainly provide a plethora of options to keep students occupied. But at its core, storybird’s main function of allowing users to write their own stories was severely flawed. The interface provided gorgeous artwork for users to use in their stories, however with only being able to use original artwork from a single artist throughout an entire project, the choice became extremely limited. If users already have a story in mind and want to add beautiful artwork to supplement their own ideas and thoughts, this is not the site for them. They will become extremely frustrated with not being able to find what they are specifically looking for. Instead, storybird is for writers who are getting their feet wet and do not have a concrete plot for a story yet. For those users, they can create a story as they go, using the illustrations provided to them as a source of inspiration. But for writers such as myself, the limited choice in illustrations do not allow us to write what we intended, simply because there are no unique photos to back up our text.

The frustration and difficulty in using the site’s main features are especially problematic given the target demographic. Simply put, if college students and young adults such as myself had a hard time creating a story, elementary age children will have an even harder time, but they will be much more impatient as well. Aside from being extremely limited, the interface locks users out after a short 7 day free trial and barrages users with the option to sign up for a paid subscription. Moreover, it costs $17 to have your completed project printed in hardcover or saved as a pdf! Due to these various expenses, storybird would actually be a more useful interface for authors or people actually looking to publish their stories. Elementary age children would simply create stories for fun. However, authors or actual writers would be more likely to invest money in a subscription or pay to have their book printed.

To conclude, storybird is all foam but no beer. The interface is aesthetically pleasing and I admire its mission to inspire users to write personalized stories. But storybird does not deliver on its promise and instead stifles the creativity of writers. Additionally, the interface fails in appealing to it’s younger audience, thanks to the difficulties it presents in story editing and the various costs associated with your “free” account.