Xplor Playground

The Educator tool for recording and planning learning.

Role
UX Design
UI Design
Time
2018
Category
Education Tech

I was the first designer hired and #3 on the Product team, working with a mobile and web development team to design and deliver a new education product: Xplor Playground. 
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The native app is designed to be used on a shared tablet in a classroom, allowing educators to seamlessly capture learning moments and track children’s health. 
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The web app is an educator's planning tool, allowing them to choose from free-form mind mapping on a canvas to more conventional tables and rich text editors.

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In this Case Study

DesignResearch 🔒
UI Design Decisions
Native & Web App
Design System Guidelines

Methods & Insights
Workshops and Ideation
Prototype User Testing
Reflections

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How might we help Educators to record evidence of children’s learning, health information and securely log attendance?

Problem Statement

Native App UI Design

Capturing Learning Moments
Educators are able to take photos and videos of children spontaneously learning using the device camera. They are then able to choose from a list of approved learning outcomes to easily demonstrate what the child is achieving.
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From this interface they are also able to tag one child, or an entire room to easily communicate with the parent app.
Handling Offline Scenarios
I designed workflows and wrote UX copy for the scenarios where internet connectivity would be unstable to reduce support tickets. During technical discussions with the product managers I also advocated for device storage to be used to ensure work would not be lost despite the increased development cost.
Fostering Collaboration
Educators communicate with parents and other educators on learning posts which allows parents to contribute while their children are out of their care. Educator leaders are also able to approve or edit content which ensures the content quality is to a sufficient level before parents see it.

Responsive across mobile devices

Avoiding Flow Interruptions
In order to avoid distractions while working on other tasks, I advocated to avoid push notifications for the majority of notification types. Instead, a number appears above the bell which indicates unread notifications.

The high priority ‘Emergency Record’ event is the sole push notification which occurs when an Educator begins when an Educator notifies an emergency is occurring at the centre.

In total, I wrote the content for 23 notification types.
Tracking Child Health Metrics
Educators are able to quickly record what children are eating and when. Parents are able to see this on their app and allows them to make more informed decisions when their child returns to their care.  

Web App

Planning learning journeys and documenting findings into greater detail on laptop devices.
Moving from touch devices to desktops.
After an Educator uses the Playground App to record documents on their device it is automatically synced to the web version. This allows Educators to expand on the written content on devices with physical keyboards which is quicker than using a touch device.
Mind Map Planning
Educators who prefer to use mind mapping when planning a child’s learning journey are able to add shapes and text in a free-form manner using this tool. In particular, the cloud media storage allows for easy adding of photos taken using the Playground App.
Structured Approach to Planning
For other centres, using a table layout was closer to their style of planning. I aimed to keep the UI panels consistent across the planning tools to ensure easy adoption between them.  Small usability micro interactions such as auto-expanding columns and rows were added after concept testing.

Research Insights


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It can be super stressful to juggle all the children at the same time while still making sure all their learning gets recorded. I don’t like having my face in a screen while the children are around.

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The Team

Mobile Tech Lead
Lauren Grimes
Elixir Tech Lead
Thu Trinh
Owen Byrne
Engineers
Chris Mabotuwana
Joshua Lareta
Mitchell Stewart
Matthew Ellis
CEO (Founder)
Mark Woodland
Product Manager
Harry Vamvakas
Product Designer
Albert Brunda
Socials
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