For UW HCDE's 2024 Capstone, my team and I partnered with a top ed-tech company to design an online marketplace for publishers, districts, and teachers.
With no existing marketplace, Lumio tasked us with building one from scratch to compete with top ed-tech platforms. The biggest challenge was meeting the diverse needs of three user groups.
This project aimed to design an innovative K-12 digital marketplace, enabling publishers to create, promote, and sell lessons while meeting the needs of districts and teachers.
Before diving into research, my team and I conducted competitive analysis and stakeholder research to understand our sponsor and its competitors.
I analyzed the market to assess existing ed-tech platforms, identifying strengths, weaknesses, and best practices. Key competitors included Amazon, Coursera, Kahoot!, and Teachers Pay Teachers.
The next step was to interview partnered publishers to understand their content creation challenges, monetization strategies, and analytics needs, as they are a key user group.
“The number of students that are on the platform. What kind of results they're getting in terms of answering questions. Are they getting the questions right or wrong? All those kinds of things. How long they're on the platform. What the length of time.”
“We need to find a way to monetize this on an annual basis. Because I can tell you, the cost and time it's taken us just to convert all of our content into [sponsor] format, we can't continue to do that if we don't have a way to monetize it on a recurring basis.”
To gather broader insights, my team and I held a focus group with six teachers, helping identify gaps and refine our focus. I discovered a disconnect between districts and teachers on content needs, shaping our design decisions.
Additional interviews were conducted to understand school districts' purchasing decisions, focusing on standards alignment and content quality.
“We'll take proposals from our teachers saying, you know, I've looked at this and I really like that.”
“We'll look at the data, look at student growth data, we'll look at achievement data. We'll survey our teachers, we'll look at usage and we're constantly every year we're doing… we're constantly doing what we call learning walks or walk throughs to observe how are they using the curriculum?”
My team and I then conducted multiple rounds of affinity mapping to categorize data, identifying key themes and user needs. This helped clarify findings and deepen my understanding of users' goals and pain points.
Based on the data, I then developed user personas to refine the marketplace design and better serve users. These personas were created with purpose, not just as a procedural step.
With a clear understanding of users, I led my team in developing wireframes with three perspectives for publishers, school admins, and teachers.
While developing the design, my team and I conducted multiple rounds of user testing with sponsor stakeholders, teachers, and school administrators using a low to mid-fidelity prototype.
Based on these tests, a number of key design solutions were implemented into the final designs.
Based on Lumio's existing design system, my team and I created an updated version to better fit the marketplace's needs, which differs significantly from Lumio's current product.
Primary Blue
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Secondary Blue
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Light Blue
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Accent Yellow
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Grey
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In order to address teachers’ pain points, there are a number of key design solutions that were implemented.
Verified teachers can leave trustworthy reviews to inform others about product quality, reducing the external effort teachers typically invest in finding suitable content.
Teachers can also request products be purchased by their district, enabling broader distribution within the district.
The following design solutions then address the needs of school districts. These solutions are also applicable for teachers as well.
Highlighting the key information users seek when browsing products creates a more pleasant experience. The essentials are laid out efficiently, helping teachers quickly understand a product.
School districts can efficiently manage distribution across the organization and track student and teacher demographics, along with product usage, to better allocate resources.
Publishers make up the last user group, and their needs differ more compared to teachers and school districts.
In-app editing allows publishers and editors to reduce back-and-forth when updating content and products.
Publishers seek to expand their customer base, and with Lumio's diverse publisher presence, a detailed profile helps customers understand their goals as an ed-tech company.
To account for the three user groups, an interactive prototype corresponding to each user type was created. Click through them below to take a closer look at the final product.
Receiving this award is a testament to my team's hard work, applying our UX and design expertise to shape the complex world of primary education.
At the end of the project, my team and I presented our work at a department conference with other 2024 teams. Judges and designers selected the award-winning projects, and we were honored with the 2024 Capstone Impact Award.
A key takeaway was learning to lead a team under tight deadlines. In 10 weeks, I saw the flexibility of the design process—no phase is ever truly complete, and revisiting steps is crucial for an effective user experience.
This project helped me grow as a designer. Exploring education’s dynamics and listening to teachers, districts, and companies provided invaluable experience that will shape my future.
I had the amazing privilege of being able to work with an amazing sponsor and team, and I'm excited to see how my senior capstone project will be implemented in the future with my sponsor.
