The Enlightened Shadow
An online behavior-management toolkit featured through
The Learning Seeds website.
Overview
The Project
Learning Seeds was looking to take their paper version of The Enlightened Shadow program and move it from high-touch to low-touch on a digital platform. Successfully designing this feature would mean taking the bottleneck of the program away and creating a more autonomous experience for those utilizing the program. The new found autonomy would provide Erica Key, founder and creator of Learning Seeds and The Enlightened shadow program the opportunity to focus on adding new techniques and solutions to better serve those in need.
The Problem
Parents and professionals need an efficient way to access trusted material to help close the development gap for children with social and behavioral challenges because the current methods of gathering information are time consuming, and limit the number of children that can be helped.
Proposed Solution
We believe that by developing a digital platform that supports access to The Enlightened Shadow content and collaborative communication, we will make it easier for parents and professionals to more autonomously address the needs of their students.
Tools Used
Sketch InVision Axure
Duration
3 weeks
Role
I worked on a team of 4 and contributed to each step of the process; including but not limited to research, design, wire-framing, testing and delivery.
Process
Discovery
On the first day, as a team, we sat down and spoke with Erica and Jason Key. We asked many questions and collected many useful documents so that we were able to understand our client and the goal they had.
User Research
After drafting a consent form, a screener was sent out to filter potential target users. Questions were created that would be best to better understand the target user and their struggles.
Analysis
With the interviews complete, we turned to affinity mapping to synthesize the data and focus on the common pain points.
Design
We began with paper sketching to ideate the basic design concept. The paper sketches became wireframes, digitized gray-scale placeholders so we could test the design. We finalized our design as a Hi-Fi prototype with color and terminology as a mockup of the toolkit.
Delivery
We performed usability tests on how hi-fi prototype to prove/disprove our design and finesse design elements as needed. With the finalized prototype ready we presented the design to the stakeholders.
Discovery
To kickoff the project, the team had a preliminary meeting with Erica and Jason Key, the stakeholders of our project. Our time was spent learning about their program and what they wanted to achieve. We also spent countless hours sifting through the many documents they shared with us. The discovery phase was extremely important to our design, as the concept we were designing had many pieces that needed to be delivered in a simple and comprehensible way.
Some key takeaways from the discovery phase that would influence our design were:
-
Solve social/behavioral challenges
-
A 'put time-in model'
-
Move from high-touch to low-touch
-
Management of materials
-
Scale to grow as program expands
-
Access to many strategies at once
-
Usable for anyone
-
Backend data collection to enhance frontend experience
We now had a solid understanding of what our Stakeholders needed from us, and how they intended their method to be delivered and utilized. Our next step was to begin the research phase and discover who the target user truly was and what they would need out of our design.
Research
I focused on curating questions for the interviews that would truly dig deep and enable the interviewees to easily elaborate and provide details of their daily struggles. The struggles that I intended the questions to hone in on related to how they currently interact with children, the behaviors that they try to teach, where and how they obtain methods as well as who they collaborate with. I performed 2 of the 7 interviews that the team conducted.
In addition to researching the target user, we also chose to research potential online competition. My teammates and I each took responsibility for conducting a competitive analysis. I handled researching and documenting TheAutismHelper.org. Per our Stakeholders recommendations I also documented the on-boarding for Hubspot Knowledge Space and the Temi mobile app, as it was believed their on-boarding was smooth and simple and ideal concepts to influence our design.
A card sort and keyword test were also devised to help us clarify how target users would potential search or browse for tips. We needed to understand the terms they would use so we could better guide our design and our stakeholders when developing the program. I helped in creating the keyword test, a set of scenarios that the user would provide terms and phrases for that they associated with each of the scenarios. With the research complete we moved to synthesizing all of the data we collected.
Analysis
We chose the method of affinity mapping to locate common threads among our interviewees. We began by writing high-level takeaways from each interview on individual post-it notes. Then the true fun began, plastering the wall with all of the colorful post-its. With the post-its up we took about 30 minutes to group the notes silently. Then we began to discuss as a team, each grouping and why the notes belonged there or not. There was a lot of note-relocating but ultimately we ended up with 5 solid "I" statements that captured the biggest pain points our interviewees faced.
Next steps were creating a Persona to reference as we designed. I began this process by creating a concept template in Sketch with goals, frustrations, a bio and some additional information. As I began work on the Customer Journey Map, my teammates took my persona concept and finessed it into the product we delivered to the stakeholders.
Meanwhile, my Customer Journey Map was really taking off. It showcased the path a user would take leading up to discovering the Learning Seeds website through their experience in The Enlightened Shadows Toolkit we were creating. The journey map captured the feelings and thoughts of the user as they would experience the product therefore providing insights to both the stakeholders and our team as we designed.
Design
Beginning with User flows, the team took some time to whiteboard our concepts for what the path a user would take would look like. The user flow included a login-process, a feed, a messaging center and the solution grid.
A site map was sketched out representing the current Learning Seeds website and where our new Enlightened Shadows toolkit would go. Taking the flow concepts, we performed a couple rounds of design studios to crank out unique design ideas in as many ways as possible. Working fast with pencil and paper the team generated many ideations for building out. In the end we felt confident that we had a design ready for wire-framing.
Using Sketch we built basic wireframes in lo-fi gray-scale. My contribution to the design was the login process. How the user would first enter The Enlightened Shadows toolkit, choose an account type, sign-in/sign-up, select an existing child or create a new child profile, fill in a brief questionnaire so the toolkit can build a basic feed and generate tips immediately upon entering.
The hi-fi prototype was built through Sketch. I added color, more clear taxonomy, pictures and an all around more real-life feel. Based on the usability tests on the lo-fi wireframes, I knew that I needed to make a few adjustments to my hi-fi version. I added in a statement on the profile setup page to inform the user that if they are not familiar enough with the child to accurately fill out the questionnaire that they can skip ahead to the feed and update the questions at a later time. I changed the flow from the teacher to the paraprofessional through their path in the Toolkit. I removed the “back” button and added “my account” and “sign out” buttons in its place. I changed “edit account” to “edit profile" and moved it to the bottom center of the page.
Delivery
In a 20 minute presentation, the team delivered the final Hi-Fi Prototype to the stakeholders and our design peers. Included was a walkthrough of the research-backed design and a demonstration of the prototype itself. Prefacing the demo with the research allowed us to inform the stakeholders as to the decisions they would be seeing in the prototype. These would include color and font choices, layout and functionality.
The main takeaways from this project are vast. Learned how to work with a client, and what kind of expectations there would be. Working for a stakeholder and understanding what they're trying to accomplish and where I fit in to help make that happen; while simultaneously understanding the user's needs and doing my best to design for both was a great learning experience. Creating a S.O.W. and moving forward while delivering on-time, each agreed upon deliverable, was a great way to stay on-task in an efficient manner. I further honed my skills of working on a team, and the intricacies that go along with managing different personality types, ideas and work methodologies.