In 2008, Intel began manufacturing small, low-cost laptop computers that could be sold for as low as $120USD. This created an opportunity for ministries of education around the world to establish initiatives to equip students and educators with affordable access to technology and digital learning resources. Governments invested aggressively in funding these low-cost laptops with the goal of enhancing the quality of education and prepare learners and educators with the skills necessary to succeed in the global economy. Some education systems went as far as promising a free laptop for every grade-school student in the country or province. By 2011, 50 million of these laptops were sold worldwide, primarily in the education market.
Despite the rapid influx of technology in global learning environments, there was one stark problem. Only 28.8% of people around the world had access to the Internet at the time (Source: Unesco, World Bank – 2010 data). In developing countries, access to broadband Internet connectivity was much lower and estimated to be just 6%. Frequent electricity blackouts further exacerbated the digital divide in these countries.
Conducting observational research in South Africa.
I conducted contextual field research with dozens of school systems on five contents where low-cost laptops were being distributed to K-8 students ( See case study on education PC research). While in the field, I quickly discovered that unreliable access to digital learning resources resulted in laptops not being utilized routinely to engage with the learning process. I also discovered that educators struggled with engaging students to achieve inquiry-based learning objectives such as conducting research for a project. The primary culprit was poor or absent Internet connectivity which hindered rather than facilitated the learning process. The images below summarize this problem in two different schools in Macedonia, one without reliable connectivity, and one with reliable connectivity. Notice the difference in technology impact between these two images.
The next step required me to define the UX vision and effectively pitch the opportunity with executive stakeholders.
Macro Goal: Scale adoption in classrooms by increasing the relevance of personal learning devices as teaching and learning tools.
Deep-dive research with publishers, content providers, school systems, and online resources to understand how comparative/competitive solutions were being hobbled together to fulfill the unmet need of poor and absent Internet connectivity.
I developed a UXRD (under NDA) to articulate the full E2E scope of design for the platform. This included personas, use cases, wireframes and design requirements for a platform consisting of hardware, software, firmware and service delivery.
Iterative testing of interaction flows prototyped in Axure were conducted with a focus on scaled deployments and managing content for classroom instruction.
Focused coordination with engineering, industrial design and UX design partners to drive 0-1 development. Throughout development, I relentlessly advocated for product design requirements to enable a solution that could be easily managed by even the most non-tech savvy educators and students so the focus could be on learning rather than IT.
Students are automatically directed to learning content when a Web browser is launched from their devices. Content accessible directly from the home page of the Lesson Planner saves valuable classroom time by focusing student on materials rather than requiring them to search and navigate.
Teachers must have unfettered access to educational resources and be able to deliver those resources to students at the right moment without taking up additional time managing the classroom or technology.
IT administrators are responsible for ensuring the content access points are accessible throughout a school system and the content is relevant and up-to-date for teachers needs. IT administrators in emerging markets are often not formally trained and may be volunteers with other job responsibilities.
Publishers are seeking a simple means to distribute interactive learning materials to school systems via SaaS-based revenue models. Unavailable or unreliable broadband Internet connectivity has been a barrier to actualize that vision until now.
Built-in software to simplify the curation of lesson materials for classroom instruction. Students simply launch a browser on their devices to access.
A portable, slim device with battery, 1TB of storage and ability to simultaneously connect 50 students to learning materials
Integrated software to distribute content modules and manage fleets of access points across a large area. Integrated 3g modems provided connectivity.
Once an E2E prototype was developed, pilots were deployed with Ministries of Education around the world. I traveled to South Africa, India, Mexico and US prison systems to observe how the platform was being applied to facilitate learning. Insights from research were then brought back to the team to establish features such as remote trickle-down content delivery, improvements with the teacher interface for lesson planning and sideloading for publishers as features for both initial productization and software updates post product launch.
