As the sole designer on this project, I handled everything in the process from beginning to end. I helped the founder clarify their concept, sketched, designed, & prototyped all phases of the design, conducted the user research & usability testing, iterated the final design, and presented all deliverables.
Laila’s main goal was to create supplemental learning materials for teachers that would help retain their students’ attention, encourage their students to practice their understanding, and ultimately increase their test scores.
The plan was to build a platform that hosted mini-lesson videos, taught by culturally responsive figures, like athletes and celebrities, with the hope that the content will be more engaging coming from inspirational figures. The platform also needed to offer quizzes to gauge understanding and engagement exercises referred to as Challenges.
The product in mind would focus on three main concepts.
Utilizing public figures to teach mini-lessons has been proven to help retain the attention of students as well as help with understanding content by making it relatable. Laila offers lessons led by athletes and other culturally responsive figures to make engaging content. Another benefit of supplemental lessons is that student's can hear concepts in new ways creating a larger chance of comprehension.
Utilizing public figures to teach mini-lessons has been proven to help retain the attention of students as well as help with understanding content by making it relatable. Laila offers lessons led by athletes and other culturally responsive figures to make engaging content. Another benefit of supplemental lessons is that student's can hear concepts in new ways creating a larger chance of comprehension.
Comprehension checks & quizzes are incorporated into the interactive mini-lessons. By practicing immediately after the lesson, the students begin to retain the information.
Challenges are competitions that call on students to make videos explaining what they have learned in a fun way. The winner may receive a special shout-out from their favorite athlete making learning fun, exciting, and rewarding. Using social and content-creating methods that are familiar to our students allows for a quicker adaptation of the programs and encourages participation
In the initial discovery phase we focused on our main user, the teacher. Knowing that the students would likely be interacting with Laila through their teacher's assignments we considered them to be our secondary user. The business had planned to be selling content to teachers either through a membership or individual purchases.
What we discovered however was that teachers were wildly overwhelmed. Nationwide, teachers are facing immense pressure for their students to perform well on standardized testing.
"Testing is not teaching. Test preparation is not Learning"
Teachers we talked to told us they felt like they were chasing test scores not spending valuable time teaching content. They are spending their personal time and resources to find solutions that will help in the classroom. Furthermore, they find new technology to be frustrating and actually makes their day more challenging.
We started to wonder, is offering yet another tool to a teacher who already is low on time, resources, and bandwidth actually going to solve any problems?
If we could get Laila into the hands of more students and give them access to a new way to study outside of the classroom we could help create a solution with out adding to our over burdened educators.
We believed that by pivoting our main user to the learner we would have a higher impact and ultimately would be the best move for the business.
As the focus shifted from teachers to students we needed to pull back and reconsider their needs. We found that students are also very stressed over testing & feel like everyone at school is on edge. They want to do well and feel like they may let their teachers down if they don't.
We broadened the scope and pulled away from standardized testing. We wanted to supply students with resources outside of the classroom that would help them better understand the topics they are learning in class. If we could take the focus away from the testing and towards truly understanding the material then better test scores will follow.
We discovered students need the following:
Although our main persona had pivoted our goals remained the same. The principles of Laila were still relevant and would influence the design decisions and features.
However, a new concept was born. A version of Laila that utilized social engagement to support students.
An educational platform that uses the influence of culturally responsive figures, peer-to-peer instruction, and user content creation as a way to offer supplemental learning resources outside of the classroom.
At this stage in the design, I was focused on clarifying the features and functions of Laila to our users. I was very careful not to reinvent the perfectly smooth wheel when it comes to social media interactions and content libraries. However, even with familiar functions and features I was still concerned our users wouldn't know how to navigate this new landscape.
How the overall concept would work was still under construction and it showed in my first drafts.
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Familiar Functions | Unfamiliar Landscape
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"Easier than Google Classroom"
Overall our users were able to accomplish the tasks easily and grasped the general idea. They enjoyed the concept and were excited to interact with the platform. However, there was room to improve clarity and simplicity.
Laila will roll out in multiple phases to serve the current state of the business and slowly integrate users into the concepts. Currently the Classroom is being built and I am writing the research plan for testing once it is live.
I learned so much from this project that I will take with me as a designer for years to come. I can't wait to see where it goes and how it will evolve over time.
