The Oppia Foundation
Team
1 UX Designer
1 Product Manager
1 Web Tech Lead
1 Developer
Tools
Figma
Figjam
Github
Adobe Creative Suite
Duration
3 Months
Website
Oppia, a non-profit edtech based out of Northern California. Their aim is to make education universally accessible with focus in underserved countries, such as Africa and Brazil.
My role was to parse out goals from the product requirements document and iterate design solutions to increase engagement with Oppia’s new subjects. This project was carried out remotely with feedback from the US and international team members. My final deliverables were desktop prototype, mobile phone prototype and a developer handoff file.
Discovery
Problem
Oppia currently offers Math as their primary subject to young learners. With plans to release new subjects in the coming year, there is not a way to give learners access to new subjects.
Solution
Learners can simply explore an array of Oppia curated subjects by conveniently accessing them through main pathways such as the splash page, the navigation menu, the dashboard and from the adjacent subject pages. Once they arrive at a subject, guidances can be offered to those that do not know where to start.
Young learners
Our primary target users are learners from the ages of 8-14. The challenges for our core users are staying engaged during the lessons, and having access to a learning platforms from an electronic device.
Key insights
It is common for siblings to share devices
Children also borrow mobile devices or laptops from parents
Features such as gamification and interactive elements, and the app's compatibility with their devices can also influence a student's decision to use a particular education app
Most of them prefer a combination of reading and writing while studying
Students primarily use their cellphones at home
Some students reported having limited working internet connection at home
Define
Scope of work
The work entails giving young learners 4 different ways to access new classroom subjects such as Science and Financial Literacy.
The access points to current pages:
Main splash page
Community library page
Learner’s dashboard
Navigation bar menu
Access points to new design pages:
5. Science classroom page
6. Science topics page
Design goals
My main focus will be on the Community Library page, and the Science Classroom page. These two pages will require design exploration and content creation. For the remaining pages, I will follow guidelines from Oppia's design systems.
1. Allow learners to quickly access all subjects
2. Easily navigate between topics and subjects
3. Quick starts for learners
User entry points
A preliminary audit of the website provided areas to highlight proposed ideas of adding subjects and topics into the existing pages. Starting from the learner’s dashboard to the existing Math subject page.
Develop
Starting ideas
My approach was looking at different ways I can arrange the subjects cards for the Community Library page. Following that I looked at ways to arrange the classroom subject page and drop down menu.
Hi-fidelity prototypes
Working through iterations guided by feedback from the design team and PM gave way to new perspectives on how each subject should be displayed. I went through rounds after rounds of iterations for each frame, gathering feedback from designers and stakeholders for the project. At one point, I was advocating for a way finding design direction that increased focus to the Oppia brand.
Click links below for interactive prototypes:
Deliver
Solution Overview
Access to all subjects
As I worked on the classroom subject page, I noticed there were three different math icons represented throughout the site. Unfortunately, none correlates with the math subject. I proactively redesigned and consolidated the icons for the math subject along with coming up with a new icon for the science subject. On the community library page, the original idea was to incorporate an ad like panel in between the contents, but through a design audit and research, the direction going forward was to have the entry point at the top of the page. This creates less confusion for the learners.
Improve way finding navigation
Quick starts for learners
Research showed a majority of learners do not know where start when they visit the site. Often times they would visit different pages and feel they they are discourage with the topics or the level of difficulty. There was a request to come up with ways to allow learners to feel empowered to learn through the guidance of Oppia. The solution was to have quick start links for the learner to not have to explore too far to start a lesson. And If they feel that they want to start exactly where they feel need help, the solution is to take a quick quiz to determine the starting point.
Collaboration with developer
This project was selected as part of the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) program. There was a big push to get the designs completed for implementation by the developer. Aside from turning over a hand off dev package, I collaborated closely with the developer to make sure the design intent was consistent with the design file.
Next steps
Currently this project is being tested on the test server. I will take part as a tester to ensure product quality and consistent is maintained. I will continue to gather more user feedback to validate designs and iterating on the point of entry at the Community Library page and classroom page. Conduct usability test with learners to gain data points regarding tasked based navigations.
Reflections
This project was quite different from previous projects, where my starting point is a PRD which had very descriptive outlines on which page needed problem solving and exploration.
I realized that I did not need to go through a full design process because I am adding to an existing design. I will proceed with a usability test with the learner group to understand how my design solution fares with the learner’s use case.
Given this project has shorter than expected timeline, I had to complete the project with the best solution in the timeframe and keeping in mind that I will go back to re-iterate after we gain more data points.