Startup Weekend EDU- San Jose

Design a product in 54 hours of at a weekend startup hackathon.

Problem

Teachers lack time for collaboration and need a more efficient way to build inclusive professional learning communities.

My Role

UX Designer/Researcher

Discovering the Problem

We conducted user interviews, card sorting, competitor analysis, and market research to identify the needs and uncover common problems.

• Lack of Time - Teachers are busy teaching, hosting after school programs grading papers and supervising students during breaks, they don’t have the time to collaborate with other teachers.

“Some days, I don’t even see the teacher next door.”

• Lack of Collaboration- There’s not enough time during the day for teachers to collaborate and share ideas. Teachers that specialize in speech therapy or special education especially feel left in the dust since they have a different curriculum and standards from general classroom teachers.

• Need a Support System- Entry-level teachers need a seasoned teacher that will share tips about lesson planning or share their frustrations. “The first year of teaching, I didn’t know what to do. I needed a mentor, but our school didn’t offer any.”

Defining Strategy and Solution

We focused on a solution to provide a safe online community that connects educators to share their best practices.

Feature and Ideas:

• Share lesson plans by topic and grade

• Share video (10mins. max), pictures and links to trending topics

• Rate and comment on videos, lesson plans and shared links

• Q&A Forum

• Mentor matchmaking

• Follow teachers or categories

• Search topics easily

User Testing

We tested or prototype with teachers and discovered:

• We need a way to encourage teachers to contribute to the platform and consistently share new materials to keep the platform active

• Teachers want to save and organize their favorite lesson plans in their personal account

• Non-tech savvy teachers need a simple UI or a format that they’re familiar with such as Facebook or Teachers Pay Teachers.

Hi-Fi Prototypes

We decided to create an all-in-one platform that:

• Helps educators find mentors

• Connects educators worldwide

• Deepens relationships through interest groups, guest speakers, book clubs, pedagogy parties, etc.  

• Promote educator relationships in interactive spaces - chat, video conferencing, forum, etc.

• Gamify by adding badges to motivate teachers to contribute