Educational product • Teachers pay Teachers
As an educator, I had spent hours and hours looking for just the right book for my lesson. I slowly realized there were very few to no age-appropriate books developed for the early grades, especially for history, racism, and social justice issues. This is the story of how one of my products came to life; Black History Month for early learners.
Duration: 3 months
My role: Conceptualization, UX Researcher, UX Designer, Author
Collaborated with: 1 illustrator, 1 visual designer, 1 consultant
Before touching pen and paper, at the very beginning of the project, I conducted online research on American best-selling children's books, nonfiction books, and teaching resources. I went online on Amazon, Teachers pay Teachers, Scholastic, and BookDepository. I had interacted on social media platforms with more than 50+ American colleagues; These sites were the most well-known and heavily visited by teachers in the US looking for books and teaching resources. I bought and downloaded the most highly rated books and resources and examined their format.
While working as a student teacher, I was very interested in observing how veteran teachers read books to young learners. I made a habit of keeping detailed notes of my colleagues' goals, behaviors, and pain points while reading to the class and my own later. I also kept notes of the children's behaviors and questions. For this project, since I was part of many American Facebook groups of teachers, I decided to do qualitative research; Taking notes of points colleagues shared about teaching Black History Month on these particular groups.
At this point, early in the research phase, I knew I needed more data to verify my assumptions and findings so far. I was looking for more quantitative as well as qualitative data regarding historical non-fiction books for early learners. As an online survey was easy to put together and share online, it was my go-to tool. I wrote a combination of open-ended and close-ended questions to make sure I would get both qualitative and quantitative data types, respectively. The insights I gained were valuable and added to the ones I had gathered from benchmarking and the Facebook groups' qualitative research (notes).
The fact that I was a school teacher when I started this project helped immensely as I could see my assumptions being validated before my eyes in the classroom. I have attempted to read books about Greek history to my students more times than I could remember. The same issues arose as the American colleagues and parents pointed out; Too much text, age-inappropriate vocabulary, not enough illustrations, no concise, easy to remember facts. For issues such as racism and diversity, the only (translated) books out there where fiction books.
The online reviews from buyers on well-known sites also provided me with valuable feedback from teachers and parents who have read non-fiction books on Black History at home and in their classroom.
The competitive benchmarking, online survey, note-taking, and usability tests have provided us with a large data volume. As an affinity diagram is the best method to analyze and organize a significant amount of data, I invited my fellow designer to help me with the analysis and get higher quality results through teamwork.
We used Miro as it is an exceptional online collaboration tool. Our affinity diagram was ready in two hours. The research data had now taken shape, and the issues with Black History Month books for young learners were evident.
The affinity diagram uncovered a comprehensive group of issues with Black History Month books on the market. It was now time to see the product through the customers' eyes. A customer journey map was the next logical step; It would help us visualize what customers, in this case, teachers, were experiencing; What were their emotions as they read Black History Month books to young students? Our research also included findings from parents who read relevant non-fiction books to their children in a homeschool environment or as a read-aloud of their choice.
Research and analysis phases were now complete, and I focused on a primary use case - a teacher buying a book to talk about racism and Black History Month. I was going to try and fix the issues I had uncovered during my research on other teaching resources on the subject matter. The customer journey map was shining a light on the problems.
What structure would ensure a smooth flow through our educational product for a teacher?
After deciding on the structure of the product, I began sketching the pages, creating a storyboard. Sketching for me is a great, inexpensive way to express ideas before prototyping. Did the solutions I had in my head made sense? I gathered my research findings and poured them into my sketches.
The solutions to social studies books' problems on the market were visible on the flow diagram and sketches. A prototype to test my solutions/designs was the next step. Were they addressing the teachers' issues with the nonfiction books for young learners effectively? A hi-fidelity prototype would answer the majority of the design team's concerns. We went ahead and printed a prototype, including all the copy and illustrations.
We conducted a usability test with a young learner with her parents' consent.
The future buyers/teachers would be offered the option to either print or read the story on a tablet, pc, laptop, or projector.
The final step was to make this product ready to build. I created detailed drafts with annotations to hand over to the visual designer, along with documents containing the research findings.
The annotations also included information for a printed version of the product as we were giving this option to our buyers as well.
This project has exhibited the issues teachers face in their classrooms regarding finding books on racism and social justice issues for young learners. In this case, I happened to be an "insider" and be well aware of the problems in teaching resources for 4-6-year-old children. However, it is essential always to remember we are not the target audience - we are not designing for ourselves but the end-users. I may have been a teacher at the time, but American teachers were the real design audience. As UX designers, we need to do our research and empathize as much as we can with the people we are designing for to provide products that solve a real problem while providing a great experience.
I was delighted to see that our efforts were rewarded with this product as buyers/teachers left more than 1,300 5/5 stars ratings, and it has been wish-listed 2,415 times!
