ShineWorld
Role / Services
UX Design + Research
Role / Services
UX Design + Research
Timeline
July 2023 - March 2024
Timeline
July 2023 - March 2024
Brief
As a Product Designer I was tasked with creating a user-centric tablet educational app that engaged young learners while adhering to early-childhood educational standards (EDCA) and managing screen time effectively.
My role involved designing user experiences, conducting testing, and collaborating with educators and developers to ensure the app's success.
As a Product Designer I was tasked with creating a user-centric tablet educational app that engaged young learners while adhering to early-childhood educational standards (EDCA) and managing screen time effectively.
My role involved designing user experiences, conducting testing, and collaborating with educators and developers to ensure the app's success.
Design Process
Research/Discovery
Driven by the desire to unlock children's inherent potential, we wanted to redefine the purpose of education.
Partnering with Feuerstein Institute and Mind in the Making, we draw upon their established frameworks and research in the science of learning and educational psychology into the methods of how we design.
Research/Discovery
Driven by the desire to unlock children's inherent potential, we wanted to redefine the purpose of education.
Partnering with Feuerstein Institute and Mind in the Making, we draw upon their established frameworks and research in the science of learning and educational psychology into the methods of how we design.
Research/Discovery
Driven by the desire to unlock children's inherent potential, we wanted to redefine the purpose of education.
Partnering with Feuerstein Institute and Mind in the Making, we draw upon their established frameworks and research in the science of learning and educational psychology into the methods of how we design.
Design
From the frameworks that we got from such institutions, we mapped and categorise the topics (Literacy, Numeracy and Learning Disposition) into digital activities.
We then formed user flows and the IA of the app. I then created several low and high fidelity prototypes of our base designs.
Design
From the frameworks that we got from such institutions, we mapped and categorise the topics (Literacy, Numeracy and Learning Disposition) into digital activities.
We then formed user flows and the IA of the app. I then created several low and high fidelity prototypes of our base designs.
Design
From the frameworks that we got from such institutions, we mapped and categorise the topics (Literacy, Numeracy and Learning Disposition) into digital activities.
We then formed user flows and the IA of the app. I then created several low and high fidelity prototypes of our base designs.
Validation
We partnered with Anglican Preschool Services, which had 19 centres and 2500 students, to make sure our system and frameworks aligned with their standards and curriculum.
We conducted 2 user acceptance am A/B testing to over 7 centres, 20 teachers and 100 students. During the first UAT, most of the students and teachers showed significance interest to implement this into their curriculum. This also brought to light several issues within the app and flow that we have to fix.
Validation
We partnered with Anglican Preschool Services, which had 19 centres and 2500 students, to make sure our system and frameworks aligned with their standards and curriculum.
We conducted 2 user acceptance am A/B testing to over 7 centres, 20 teachers and 100 students. During the first UAT, most of the students and teachers showed significance interest to implement this into their curriculum. This also brought to light several issues within the app and flow that we have to fix.
Validation
We partnered with Anglican Preschool Services, which had 19 centres and 2500 students, to make sure our system and frameworks aligned with their standards and curriculum.
We conducted 2 user acceptance am A/B testing to over 7 centres, 20 teachers and 100 students. During the first UAT, most of the students and teachers showed significance interest to implement this into their curriculum. This also brought to light several issues within the app and flow that we have to fix.
Problem
Goals
Empower teacher to have accurate, fast and repeatable personal objective assessment of the students.
Create engaging yet increasingly challenging activities to gather useful data.
Iterate closely with teachers and students to make sure the app fits within their schedule and curriculum.
Empower teacher to have accurate, fast and repeatable personal objective assessment of the students.
Create engaging yet increasingly challenging activities to gather useful data.
Iterate closely with teachers and students to make sure the app fits within their schedule and curriculum.
When I joined the team in June, the ideas were already churning, and they even had some wireframes sketched out. But over the next few months, went from these rough ideas to a full-on alpha launch on TestFlight and Google Play Console for a pilot program at Anglican Preschool.
When I joined the team in June, the ideas were already churning, and they even had some wireframes sketched out. But over the next few months, went from these rough ideas to a full-on alpha launch on TestFlight and Google Play Console for a pilot program at Anglican Preschool.
User Flows
Design System
Since we are designing this product from the ground-up, our design system started simple and stayed flexible. We chose a colour palette that suited the kindergarten setting and provided enough contrast for ADA compliance, and adhered to it. I have also created a component library for faster product velocity.
Since we are designing this product from the ground-up, our design system started simple and stayed flexible. We chose a colour palette that suited the kindergarten setting and provided enough contrast for ADA compliance, and adhered to it. I have also created a component library for faster product velocity.
We went through 2 major User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as we worked closely with the students, teachers and curriculum head.
UAT 1: This was the first time the app will be tested apart from the dev team and the internal team. Hence, we didn’t want to bloat the app with too many activities to test. We only tested the basic flow and 4 activities make sure that implementing such a session in a curriculum with real teachers and students would make sense. Thankfully, 75% of teachers are interested in implementing ShineWorld into their lesson plan and 80% of the students are engaged and understand what needed to be done. However, we realised the activities were too easy for some of the students. Hence, in the next iterations, one of the changes was that we added more content with varying difficulty.
UAT 2: We added the remaining 56 activities to test and fixed some minor bugs. We tested the longer user flow as we have not tested and timed the whole Activity Journey which consists of 20 activities instead of the previous 4. We also did some A/B testing to see which screens will be better for the students.
We went through 2 major User Acceptance Testing (UAT) as we worked closely with the students, teachers and curriculum head.
UAT 1: This was the first time the app will be tested apart from the dev team and the internal team. Hence, we didn’t want to bloat the app with too many activities to test. We only tested the basic flow and 4 activities make sure that implementing such a session in a curriculum with real teachers and students would make sense. Thankfully, 75% of teachers are interested in implementing ShineWorld into their lesson plan and 80% of the students are engaged and understand what needed to be done. However, we realised the activities were too easy for some of the students. Hence, in the next iterations, one of the changes was that we added more content with varying difficulty.
UAT 2: We added the remaining 56 activities to test and fixed some minor bugs. We tested the longer user flow as we have not tested and timed the whole Activity Journey which consists of 20 activities instead of the previous 4. We also did some A/B testing to see which screens will be better for the students.
Next Steps
We would be looking forward to do continual user testing to continue to refine the activities and flow for ShineWorld. However, do explore ShineEval: A web app dashboard that empowers teachers to better engage parents by seamlessly tracking students' progress and providing comprehensive and personalised reports and strategie.
See how ShineEval (which I had a hand in designing too) complements ShineWorld, forming a comprehensive suite designed to streamline educational assessments and enhance learning experiences.
We would be looking forward to do continual user testing to continue to refine the activities and flow for ShineWorld. However, do explore ShineEval: A web app dashboard that empowers teachers to better engage parents by seamlessly tracking students' progress and providing comprehensive and personalised reports and strategie.
See how ShineEval (which I had a hand in designing too) complements ShineWorld, forming a comprehensive suite designed to streamline educational assessments and enhance learning experiences.
Learning Points
This projects had many firsts! It was the first time working on a UX project with such complexity, first major user testing with over 100 users. So I had learnt plenty but this are the few pointers:
Realistic timeline: As a startup, we must have high product velocity to meet the clients need, and at the same time make sure we had all our bases covered. This meant the crux is to balanced quality with speed. I can’t be creating a custom icons for our library from scratch, that will take too much time. Yet, I cannot be also copy and pasting a design library since ShineWorld has such a niche user base. I had to balanced the two and make a small custom design library with some graphics and illustrations being licensed from another library. This allowed the design and development of 60 over activities to be fast enough for it to test and iterated in a matter of a few months.
Organising data into insights: Honestly, this is the first time I have tested for so many things from the critical failures of the user flow, to the logic of the options given to the student. There was no way I can list down everything without being messy. It was my first time utilising Google Sheets so much as it help organised and make it affordable for my colleagues to contribute from different testing sessions. This workflow distilled the thousands of data points into a handful of insights for each user flow, making the design and development changes to be easily communicated and tracked.
Understanding the backend processes: Usually in UX design, we focus on making sure that the user flow for the frontend is good and seamless. But since one of the main selling point is having automated assessment, we had to understand how does the student interact with the tablet and how can we optimise the interaction so that the data collected is as accurate can be so that the AI assessment is as fair as it can be. This definitely affected many design decision to change to better suit the backend processes.
This projects had many firsts! It was the first time working on a UX project with such complexity, first major user testing with over 100 users. So I had learnt plenty but this are the few pointers:
Realistic timeline: As a startup, we must have high product velocity to meet the clients need, and at the same time make sure we had all our bases covered. This meant the crux is to balanced quality with speed. I can’t be creating a custom icons for our library from scratch, that will take too much time. Yet, I cannot be also copy and pasting a design library since ShineWorld has such a niche user base. I had to balanced the two and make a small custom design library with some graphics and illustrations being licensed from another library. This allowed the design and development of 60 over activities to be fast enough for it to test and iterated in a matter of a few months.
Organising data into insights: Honestly, this is the first time I have tested for so many things from the critical failures of the user flow, to the logic of the options given to the student. There was no way I can list down everything without being messy. It was my first time utilising Google Sheets so much as it help organised and make it affordable for my colleagues to contribute from different testing sessions. This workflow distilled the thousands of data points into a handful of insights for each user flow, making the design and development changes to be easily communicated and tracked.
Understanding the backend processes: Usually in UX design, we focus on making sure that the user flow for the frontend is good and seamless. But since one of the main selling point is having automated assessment, we had to understand how does the student interact with the tablet and how can we optimise the interaction so that the data collected is as accurate can be so that the AI assessment is as fair as it can be. This definitely affected many design decision to change to better suit the backend processes.
