Prenda
UX UI
Research
Product Design
Co-design with Karthika Gopinathan
Group build
12 weeks
Currently being built
Process
- Research the standard practices when designing for children.
- Research how students, parents and teachers track progress currently.
- Experiment with how to show the data in a way that is appealing to students and informative for parents.
- Interview students, parents, and teachers to ensure all needs are met.
- Design prototypes in low, mid, and high fidelity and continually test them to ensure iterations are informed on actual data.
- Hand off designs to engineers. Discuss design changes with engineers as needs arise.
The Product
- Data from student weekly reflection
- Student goal status in Math and English Language Arts
- Feedback from teachers
- 4 of their favorite projects
- What subjects their projects focus on
The Process
- What are the standard practices when designing for children?
- How do students, parents and teachers track progress currently?
- How can we show the data in a way that is appealing to students and informative for parents?
- How can we inform parents of their student’s progress?
- How can teachers keep track of their student’s work ?
UX Design for Children
Nielson Norman Group
Clayton Children’s Museum
Trunki Suitcases
Ábécés Könyv by Anna Kövecses
The current method of tracking student progress
Problems:
- Can only look at one subject at a time. No visual comparison.
- No call to action.
- Not very visually appealing or accessible for children.
- Buried fairly deep within Prenda World portal.
Goal design:
- We designed a way to show the progress vs the expected progress through ring diagrams. They were much more visually appealing than the graph.
- We cut the word “behind” cause both teachers and parents hated it.
- We added a “Keep going!” button as a call to action for students to catch up or maintain progress. It brings them to their goals.
- We broke it down into overall progress and weekly progress so students can see both goals.
- Students were not interested. Thought it looked “boring”
- Parents thought it was a bit corporate looking
- Teachers like core idea but felt it needed to look more engaging for students
- Thought empowerment section was interactive. Checked with engineering and found this was not possible.
- Too busy, no obvious heirarchy.
- Focus section could be represented better
Mid-Fidelity Findings:
- Split opinions on showing attendance but decided to cut after this test round as many teachers don’t track it
- Too much colour
- Very positive response to sun dial
High-Fidelity Findings:
- No call to action. Students see that they are behind but no obvious way to get to their work.
- Parents and teachers HATED word behind.
- Too much info in the goal tracking sections
The sun dial represents a student’s feelings toward learning that week based on the data from their weekly reflection. The playfullness was effective in engaging students.
- I learned to frequently check in with engineers to see what was viable when designing.
- Working with stakeholders can create unexpected challenges. It’s good to be able to explain your designs in different terms when speking to different groups.
Challenges
- The teachers at Prenda were on school holidays at the time of testing so it was difficult to get them to commit to a time.
- Testing products on students over zoom was challenging.
Accomplishments
- Created a product that satisfied all three user groups.
- Coming soon! This product launches in September 2024 and I will be able to measure its impact then.
I continue to work with engineers after the hand-off to work out any kinks.