This is the journey to re-design an educational experience that both engages kids and supports educators. The result not only increased sales conversion rates, but also improved student test scores by 19%.
Led visual design and front-end development. Collaborated with game design and product strategy team.
Cross-functional Uplifted team including game design strategy, back end development and project management.
November 2016 — May 2018
The InferCabulary creators had predicted in 2015 that tablets would be the most popular device to use in classrooms and built a tablet-only prototype.
But upon going to market, they realized that most schools still are, and for the foreseeable future will be, relying primarily on desktop computers. Their core methodology was a success, but their implementation was not.
— A responsive, web-based version of the game for desktop and mobile.
— Improved UX. The prototype design was a combination of their own direction and a developer's best judgement.
InferCabulary was a small startup with a limited budget. So we planned to identify and isolate the problems to solve in order to prioritize the work in such a way that the MVP was truly the most effective solution to enter the market and attract investment.
I adopted the double diamond design process to start by gaining a better understanding of InferCabulary's business, users and constraints.
For confidentiality reasons, we couldn't interview students directly, but I performed my own research on K-12 age range and met with the InferCabulary team of educators to compile of list of core insights:
— Constant feedback is critical to maintain focus and engagement.
— Kids are impatient, particularly if they don't feel engaged.
— Kids rely strongly on audio, and less on text.
65% of students score below proficient in reading comprehension.
As educators and speech language pathologists, InferCabularly's founders' aim to close this literacy gap an they view vocabulary words as the building blocks to reading.
This was really helpful context for me to understand the full scope of the problem that they were trying solve and informed design decisions later in the process.
A heuristic evaluation of the prototype gave me a framework to analyze the prototype and introduce the client to tested UX principles.
It was also an opportunity to better understand the semantic reasoning methodology that makes InferCabularly unique.
Some key issues I detected:
— Jumbled layout is confusing and makes it difficult to understand expected behavior
— No progress indicators lessens users' sense of control and makes the game feel monotonous.
— Redundant information clutters interface
Based on our research and conversations with InferCabulary we had defined:
— The existing build was not compatible with desktop devices.
— Analysis of our audience and competing products indicated that the app was unable to keep students engaged and compete with other educational apps.
— Heuristic evaluation uncovered significant UX issues at every level of the app.
— Diane Ackerman
Our business analyst led a series of conversations with InferCabulary to brainstorm strategies to increase student engagement.
Both stakeholders and our team quickly agreed that the game needed to feel more like a game. It was even in those early conversations that we chose a theme - mountain climbing.
We defined the problem to solve as - how to gamify the experience on an MVP budget.
I worked closely with our business analyst and project manager to brainstorm simple but effective ways to introduce principles of game design.
As a full team we upvoted the ideas that struck a balance between impact and effort before moving on to create low-fi wireframes in UXPin to get a feel for the flow of game.
Pulling from our brainstorming sessions, we chose to prioritize adding a reward system, progress indicators, and multiple levels as part of the gamification effort.
Again, going for high impact and low effort for the MVP, we leveraged new features to support the mountain climbing theme. For example, 'lives' were named carabiners.
Audio cues and controls added for all core game text including instructions, feedback, vocab/foil words, and hints.
The game was starting to feel more like a game, but we with just one type of activity, it still got repetitive and boring quickly.
We worked closely with InferCabulary educators to add a second activity type named Basecamp. Designed as a review, Basecamps were mixed into each mountain, or level, sparingly.
Adding another activity type opened up new possibilities for gamification. For example, completing 3 basecamps earned students an extra life.
We had the opportunity to test our MVP prototype with a class of 5th grade students. The session was run by the InferCabulary team.
Some key insights included:
— The activities were fun but did get repetitive after a while.
— Students that struggled ended up just getting stuck.
— Students liked the design visuals but it still didn’t really feel like a game to them.
We had actually anticipated this issue prior to testing but this was the most difficult change to make since it involved significant time and effort from both our team and InferCabulary.
Updates included in the MVP included:
— Adding an activity type that was actually a variation on the original ‘Ascent’ activity. This time as a timed exercise.
— Laying the groundwork for a fourth activity type, similar to ‘memory’ that was developed post-MVP.
As an educational tool, it was of critical importance to make sure the game could successfully balance challenge and reward for students of all levels.
Updates to our designs included:
— Adding hints
— Introducing 3-star accuracy scoring
— Adjusting the algorithm to increase the number of Basecamp review sessions based on user performance
— Laying the groundwork for post-MVP educator tools to control students’ level
During discovery we had reviewed competitor educational apps and games but this time we pulled inspiration from non-educational games.
Updates to our designs included:
— Expanding the variety of rewards
— Making the look and feel more unique with custom artwork
— Updating the visual design to feel more immersive and colorful
— Adding sound effects for nearly all interactions (selection, success, level completed, etc)
I coded the front end for this effort, so the design deliverables I produced were less extensive than for an effort with handoff to a separate development team.
We moved into development at this point with the goal to release the MVP into production and continue testing and collecting feedback from users.
The gamification effort for InferCabulary was (no pun intended) a game changer. Their paid customer base saw a pretty abrupt increase that additionally opened the door to investors.
This initial effort also set the stage for additional game features and an entire suite of educator tools.
19%
Improvement in student test scores.
10x
Increase in paid customers.
84%
Free trials converted to paid customers.
Besides learning about game design, which was new to me at the start of this effort, I was also forced to re-examine the principles of UX in relation to a different context and audience.
This project continued to grow including updates to the game, the addition of educator tools and a marketing effort.
— Games need to delight users more than other digital products.
And this goes double for younger audiences. The experience really needs to be engaging and positive in order to maintain interest.
— The pros and cons of developing my own designs.
The line between design and development was very blurry during this effort. At the time this felt very agile but ultimately I discovered important benefits to separating planning from building and planners from builders.