Where am I? Is this purgatory?

Class Venture

Product Design,
Branding & Web App

May 2020
Go To Final Design

Project Background

Class Venture was a conceptual design project looking at creating a classroom tool that gave ownership of a student's progress into their own hands. My team and I explored the concept from ideation to an individual and mostly realized product.

My Roles

  • User Reasearch
  • Competitive Analysis
  • UX Research & Ideation
  • Establishing Design Systems
  • Visual Design & Illustration
  • Branding
  • Animations
  • Interactive Prototyping
  • User Interviews & Testing
  • Style Guides & Handoff Packaging

Product Details

Our stakeholder is creating a student portal within a classroom management product to help students increase their engagement in their own learning experience.  Features will allow students to not only track their academic progress but engage with teachers and other classmates. The platform provides opportunities for students to give feedback to teachers or other classmates, earning them badges or rewards. The platform will then calculate individual student achievements through these interactions as well as academic achievement, school involvement, etc.  Ultimately, this data will offer actionable insights that students, teachers, and parents can leverage to better support students academically.

The Problem

Create a platform that allows students to engage with teachers and showcase their achievements.

Establishing the project

My team and I had no information given to us to start, so as a team we created some basic initial information.
  • Project Brief
  • Problem Statement & Overview
  • Target Audiences
  • Brand Principles
  • Ethics Artifact
  • Team Contract

Research & Ideation

Exploratory Research

First thing we tackled was to establish the market surrounding our product.
  • Recognize Trends
  • List Lead Competitors
  • Identify Gaps in the Marketplace
  • Establishing a Best Form

Competitive Analysis

We then took the identified lead competitors and further analyzed what they were doing, how they looked, and how students regularly interacted with the product.
Some direct and indirect competitors I researched were...
  • Blackboard
  • Monday.com
  • Canvas

User Interviews

Initial user interviews and surveys were done to determine current pros and cons to what the students used currently, and then also to establish areas we could improve their experiences.

Ideation Mapping

With our product marketplace and competition established the team then moved forward into the ideation of the product features and potential screens needed.

Initial Styles & Sketches

Once the initial research was all done as a team we then split off to work on our individual ideas.

Style Tile Draft Iterations

Dashboard Sketches

Screen Sketches

Web App

Moving forward from the team research and my sketches for the project, I had to move directly into mid and high fidelity screen drafts due to a time constraint.

Drafts

Moving into making draft screens using Sketch, they were initially rough and missing function.

Prototype Drafts

The first prototype draft was built in InVision and only followed a very simple user flow.

User Flow

The User is Jennifer, a 3rd grade student in Mrs. Danvers' Class. She is opening her app to check her notifications and turn in her Matilda reading assignment.
  • Check your conversations by expanding it's window.
  • Check your assignments by expanding it's window
  • Click the Classes button to visit the Classes screen.
  • View your newest messages.
  • In the Assignments window, click on your Matilda reading assignment.
  • Mark the assignment as finished and close the pop-up window.
  • Return to the Dashboard screen, by clicking the down arrow at the top of the screen.
View Prototype

MicroInteractions

Some minor microinteractions were developed, using Adobe Animate and After Effects, to add to the possibilities of the product.

User Testing

After I had an initial prototype, I did a series of user testing. I tested the prototype with 2 teachers and 3 students.
View Test Doc

Final Design

Prototype

This final design prototype was what was presented and delivered as the finished product.

User Flow

The user flow presented in the final prototype is much the same as the draft one, only a few new feature demos were added.
  • Check your new customizations and select the Coastal theme.
  • Add the new feature and return to the Dashboard screen.
  • Check your conversations by expandind the window, and then click on the alert for the Class Board.
  • View the newest messages and then click your reading assignment, mark it as finished, close the pop-up window, and return to the Dashboard screen.
  • Click on the progress button to check if you have unlocked any new levels.
  • Update your Reading level by clicking the star, then clicking anywhere, and then return to your Dashboard screen.
  • Check for new customizations and select the Mountain theme, then add your new feature and return to your Dashboard screen.
View Prototype

Prototype Video Walkthrough

Video was made using InVision and a screen recorder.

Style Guide

As part of this project, I created a style guide defining the design system I used.
View Style Guide

Next Steps

Takeaways & Going Forward

With the user testing that we did, there were some issues regarding incomplete features and confusing flows. Mostly moving forward a great deal more testing would need to happen with students in the appropriate grade range. In addition to more testing, a teacher portal would need to be created, addressing any number of those interactions.

If I had More Time

I would definitely spent more time with children testing the product. That would have simply opened up way more in what I could do in improving the experience in the Class Venture app.
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©2020 Jennifer Purcell