THE Problem
Embark Labs is on a mission to teach elementary and middle school kids essential technical and problem-solving skills in a hands-on, collaborative way through a project based curriculum. However, after projects are completed, there is no central location where projects can be uploaded and viewed by currently enrolled students, their parents and potential customers in a safe and collaborative environment.
The Solution
Our team refined our clients vision of an online web platform into an MVP web prototype to lay a foundation for parents and children to aggregate their projects online and demonstrate the value proposition of Embark Labs.
Please take a minute to follow my process below.
Details
TEAM
Shanna Jan, Jessica Choy, Van Truong & I worked for 2.5 weeks for Embark Labs.
Tools used
- Pencil & whiteboard sketches
- Omnigraffle
- Sketch
- Invision
“Recognizing the need is the primary condition for design.
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It starts with the user
We tapped into our network of friends and family with kids in after school programs and conducted extended interviews with 20+ parents and children about their goals, attitudes and pain points to inform our personas and our design objectives.
Personas
Equipped with an understanding of what was most important to potential users when they are considering after school programs, and after school coding programs specifically, we collated our data into personas we could balance the needs of each when talking about our design decisions.
Task Analysis
After getting a grasp of who are users are, we assumed the role of a Heather (above) to analyze the tasks and steps she would take on existing services to check on her daughters progress in class.
Scope: MVP
Once we understood our users and our client, we used spider diagramming and other tools to flush out what would be the most valuable minimum viable product we could deliver to our client in the time 2.5 week project window.
concept model
It was important to our client that we create a safe space for parents and kids to view project work. Therefore it was important we consider how their private gallery would be accessed.
Sketching
We made paper prototypes to test our concepts and validate that our layout and overall feel made sense to our users.
Digitized Prototype
While paper prototyping is helpful to validate the higher level concepts of your solution, there is no substitute to a high fidelity animated mock up to give a user a taste of what the final product will look like. Sample screens at the top and my interactive prototype below.