The Student Zone App teaches students healthy habits in the following six categories: Food as Fuel, Play: 60, Leadership, Mind & Body, Planet, and Community.
Disclaimer: None of the materials are my property and all rights remain with CustomED and its
partners.
Due to an NDA, the concept design, ideation and design process, and user research will be kept
confidential.
Product Designer,
Instructional Designer
Design team, working in collaboration with Educators, Developers, Child Privacy Experts, and Content Writers
6 months
I started by doing the User Research and Market Research to determine what we needed to do in order to create a successful product. The biggest barrier was that most people who download EdTech apps don't use it. This meant that not only do we want to draw in new users, but we want to create incentives to maintain user retention and engagement.
As part of the Design Team, we brainstormed several different ideas on how to structure the app. Ideally, we wanted to gamify the activities by taking inspiration from the most popular apps I researched at the time, which included Candy Crush and Pokemon Go. Unfortunately, we were unable to create the app that we wanted due to external constraints, but we were able to decide on the following framework:
Users will complete an activity in order to get a badge. Once users gain at least six badges, they will become a Champion, which gives them access to exclusive content. We want to rely on our partnership with the NFL to create incentives that would excite our users and encourage them to participate.
Students under 13 need parental permission in order to have access to an app to avoid million dollar lawsuits. While the company used the services of PRIVO, an organization that specializes in children's online privacy protection laws, I completed a KidAware certificate to understand the basics of child privacy laws in the US and UK, which includes COPPA guidelines.
Here are the three types of users currently using this app that we need to accomodate:
Goals:
Difficulties:
Goals:
Difficulties:
Goals:
Difficulties:
Based on the research and the concerns outlined in the user profiles, I created a user flow that walks through the log-in and sign-up process needed to ensure student privacy and safety. The blue lock represents content that is blocked to the user if they are under 13 and do not have permission from their parent.
I created the low-fidelity and mid-fidelity mockups for the app, as well as some concept designs on some of the features we want to implement. Because I was involved in the curriculum building, I was able to easily build it into the app framework. During this process, I led brainstorming sessions with other educators and team members to ensure we included quality educational content.
I worked with the Visual Designer to redesign the app. While I focused on the UX, he expanded the blue and green color scheme in order to include brighter colors and textures to make the app fun and engaging. Here is an example of the changes we made with the old design:
We created the app while working with developers and Buildfire. Here are some images from our final product:
The app was published Apple Play and Google Play for students to download and enjoyed a sharp increase in new user sign-ups. Classrooms in New Jersey implemented this app to teach nutrition and other healthy habits to their students. Future design changes plan to use NFL player images and incorporate special events such as the Superbowl to give our users incentive to return to the app and continue to use it.