Itsme
Duration: 3 months, Jan-Apr 2020
Role: Research, UX design, UI design, Content Strategy
The aim of this project is to create an application designed to help teachers plan, deliver and assess online safety lessons in the primary classroom efficiently. This project was in response to the Department of Education update to their Relationships and Sex Education guidelines in June 2019, which were set to be mandatory from September 2020. The initial idea was provide a simulation-type product that would support online safety lessons.
Discover stage
Interviews
Interviews were conducted with primary school teachers and parents. Interviews provide qualitative data and was particularly useful in obtaining detailed information on a teacher’s experience of the primary classroom and perceptions and opinions of both types of participant’s view on online safety.
Competitor Analysis
Analysing competitors teachers resolved to provided valuable insights to what is missing in their current solutions- such as lack of content or engagement from pupils as well as their views on paid and free resources.
Secondary Research
Additional background research was conducted to fully understand the importance of the project, including statistics on internet usage for children and key areas of concern- which evidently directs toward social media engagement.
Define Stage
Personas
There were three end-users for this application; the teacher, the pupil and the parent. As the interviewees recruited were also the target users, I created three personas based on their demographics and experiences.
User Stories
A user story was visualised using the three personas created and based on descriptions from earlier interviews. Separate stories were written in detail and summarised in a timeline to identify key points.
User Journey Mapping
Specifying the problem
Specific issue
Social media related issues are the most common reported incidents, with 23% of 8-11 year olds having an account.
RSE guideline 2020 update creates a large focus on online safety education, thus creating another burden for teachers although they are currently overworked
Parent engagement is low, despite issues likely to be happening from home.
No hands-on demonstration to show how social media platforms work, highly relying on children’s imagination to put theory to context.
Solution ideas
Aim the product at Key Stage 2 (7-11 year olds) and specifically themed around social media.
Pre-made lesson plans covering the RSE guidelines with data tracking, to support teachers by saving them planning time with a clear guide to delivering the lessons and making assessment accessible with easily digestible data.
Parent guides and home access to encourage home involvement. These must be easy for teachers to distribute to parents. i.e. one-click PDF download.
Simulated social media environment to closely relate classroom knowledge to real world applications, allowing lessons to be easily applied.
Develop Stage
Brainstorming
Data collated from the previous stages were translated into possible functionality. These were listed as a rough ideas list. For example, to allow teachers to easily track data, the possibility of multi-choice responses.
Paper Prototyping
These loose ideas were then sketched out as rough paper prototypes to begin visualising the user interactions.
Minimum Viable Product
The paper prototyping phase demonstrated a large number of possible functionality that would be difficult to fully explore in the first phase of this project. So for the purpose of meeting a minimum viable product, a list of the essential functionality was produced in order to focus on the core offerings of the application. A list of functionality that is worth considering for future development is also noted.
MVP
Individual simulated environment
User Interface to be based on Instagram
Creating a profile- building an avatar, writing a description and selecting private/public profiles
Creating a post- choosing from pre-selected images, including a multiple choice caption to accompany and option to “share with friends only”
Three simulated profiles, with ability to block or report.
One lesson plan with parent guide to accompany lesson. (Avatar and self-identity) Lessons must meet one or more of the RSE guidance criterias.
Multiples classes per teacher account.
Data per lesson per class. e.g. number of “private” accounts.
Future development
Interaction with classmates.
Painting widget for drawing an avatar and own posts.
Like, follow, commenting and direct messaging simulated profiles as part of a lesson.
Enable/disable functions.
Camera access- parents can accept/decline consent via app.
Additional lessons to cover a larger portion of the RSE guidance criteria.
Information Architecture: Site Map
The site map highlighted the hierarchy and relationship between pages. This is an iterative process, where the production of wireframes to high fidelity prototypes may influence changes to the site map and vice versa. The site map included future development considerations to ensure the structure would be suitable.
Wireframing
Balsamiq was used to create the wireframes. Site structure was mostly considered at this stage, including; Navigation, layout and devices.
User flow
User flows were created for the teacher- as the main user- to better understand and improve their interaction through the application. This was an iterative process, where issues are raised these were fed into the design.
High Fidelity Prototype
Created using Figma. Using the wireframes as a guide, each page was designed along with a style guide. Detailed interactions are considered, including transition styles, hovers and states.
Style Guide
Reflection
Although this project was not developed into a working platform, I learnt a lot from working on this project; understanding a complex user journey of a teacher’s work flow; understanding the UK national curriculum system; ensuring all elements of the app was suitable to use with children with considerations involving sensitive topics around online safety.
The project would have benefited with further research into how schools may respond to the Relationship and Sexual Guidance update, more variations of personas, user stories and a user journey that would consider further recording pupil progress along with an extensive usability test at a later stage.