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Case Study: Intel Education Content Access Point


Role: Lead UX Research & Product Design
Company: Intel


Netinspire's founder, Ryan Palmer led 0-1 research and UX strategy for an innovative platform designed to deliver learning content in education environments with little to no Internet connectivity.

Context & Problem

After millions of low-cost laptops and tablets were deployed for use in schools across the globe, it became quickly evident through user research that the lack of reliable Internet connectivity created a major barrier to engaged adoption of the devices for learning.   


Read on to learn how research was applied to establish the design of an innovative new product opportunity that successfully launched to support digital learning in emerging market school systems.

The 0-1 Research Process

UX research was applied from idea to concept to prototype to scaled production globally.

Generative Research

Identified unmet needs and design requirements with deep-dive contextual in-situ research at school systems in emerging markets.

Concept Testing & Prototyping

Conceived of a solution based on research insights and defined product opportunity with storyboards and design brief. Prototyped end-to-end solution with industrial designer and UX designer. Tested prototype in the field with education systems worldwide. Pitched product opportunity and received funding and resources to productize.

Tactical UX Research & Design

Managed UX requirements with hardware and software teams and applied heuristic evaluations to the many layers of software interfaces being developed. Conducted user research for rapid, iterative feedback and interface refinements during development and with rabbit beta customers.

Designed generation 2 of the platform based on feedback from school systems, publishers and solution partners.

Strategic Generative Research

Deeply Understanding Context of Use

 Structured qualitative interviews and ethnography was conducted with educators, students, IT administrators and ministry of education leaders to understand the impact a lack of connectivity had on learning opportunities and how schools adapted to the connectivity barrier with workarounds.

Some of my primary questions were:

  • What are the behaviors, attitudes and pain points with computer usage in poorly connected learning environments?
  • What are the workarounds attempted by school systems to engage learners with digital technology without connectivity and how effective were those?
  • What could be done to quickly overcome technical and IT challenges in the classroom when connectivity and teacher training deficiencies cannot be solved overnight?
  • How can an ecosystem of digital learning resources be quickly accessible by students and educators in the classroom when Internet connectivity remains a barrier?

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These photos from classrooms in Macedonia illustrates the stark difference between disengaged, disconnected learning environments and engaging, connected classrooms.
Disconnected classroom: Disengaged students. Limited benefits with e-learning.
Connected classroom: Active, engaged learning

Discovery research found that in poorly connected classrooms:

  • Educators struggled with engaging students to achieve inquiry-based learning objectives such as scientific experimentation or contributing to a group project.   
  • Digital devices in the classroom were often perceived as a hinderance rather than facilitator of the learning process due to IT complexities, lack of digital learning materials and educator overhead to integrate e-learning into curriculum objectives. 
  • Laptops were ‘taken out’ for specific tasks and poorly integrated into the learning experience.

The Design Opportunity

Technology in the hands of students and teachers isn't valued unless combined with comprehensive content and connectivity to achieve learning outcomes.

The challenge:  Define a solution to engage students with rich, interactive learning materials and facilitate collaborative projects and student-teacher interaction when the Internet could not be relied on as a resource.  

 

High-Level Design Requirements For Poorly Connected and Unconnected Classrooms

  • Establish a simplified means for educators and school system administrators to store, manage and distribute digital learning materials.
  • Enable school systems to tailor their own local e-learning content.
  • Empower educators to curate lessons for specific classroom activities and focus students on relevant content.
  • Engage students with rich, interactive learning without a reliance on Internet connectivity or stable electricity.
  • Require little to no IT management skills to use and maintain.

Concept Testing

Storyboards and product concepts were developed to establish the North Star user journey and further test with potential external customers in the education technology ecosystem.  This stimuli was used in conjunction with focused interviews with ministries of education, content publishers, non-profit organizations and IT service providers to generate insights for product requirements.

Target User Goals

Students
Teachers
IT Admins
Publishers

Students are automatically directed to learning content when a Web browser is launched from their devices.   Relevant classroom content is accessible directly from the home page of the Lesson Planner application.    A directory of additional offline learning resources is available via a single click.

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, NGOs and education technology companies are seeking a simple means to sell and distribute interactive learning materials to school systems despite connectivity gaps.  

Deep Dive Design Research & Product Definition Toolkit

 
After validating the end-to-end product concept with stakeholders internally and externally, the project was green lighted to continue with prototyping and full product definition.   The following are the UX research and strategy processes applied during 0-1 design and development:

Meta Analysis

Deep-dive research with publishers and content providers was conducted to understand how to best load digital learning materials onto an offline device.

UX Requirements

Development of a UXRD (under NDA) to articulate the full E2E scope of design for the platform. This included use cases, wireframes of the various software interfaces required and well documented product requirements for a platform consisting of hardware, software, firmware and service delivery.

Design Prototpying

A team was established consisting of industrial design, UX design, hardware engineering and software to prototype a fully functional proof of concept. UX requirements were continuously validated to ensure simple setup, administration and maintenance by even the most non-tech savvy educators and students so the focus could be on learning rather than IT.

User Testing

User testing was performed with clickable interfaces designed for students, IT administrators and educators to gather rapid insights during development. Changes were made to improve the design specifications based on feedback. Once the product MVP was finalized, additional user testing was conducted with beta samples in the field with select customer engagments.

UX Design - Software Enablement

    An interface was designed to allow educators with little to no technical knowledge to quickly curate lesson materials stored on the Content Access Point and organize them as focused lessons.

    Students were able to immediate access teacher-promoted content by simply launching a Web browser once connected to the Content Access Point. 

    Content Access Point 1.0 UX Design MVP

    Lesson Planning & Content Management

    Built-in software to simplify the curation of lesson materials for classroom instruction.  Students simply launch a browser on their devices to access.

    Hardware Design

    A portable, slim device with battery, 1TB of storage and ability to simultaneously connect 50 students to learning materials

    IT Management

    Integrated software was designed for simple local setup and management as an access point.

    Researching The End-To-End Experience in The Field to Refine Software UX

    Real-World Deployments

    The fully developed solution MVP was sold to Ministries of Education, NGOs, local OEMs and publishers around the world.  Additional research was conducted with school systems in South Africa, Panama, India, Argentina and even US prison systems to observe how the platform was being applied to deliver content and facilitate learning.  Insights from research were then translated into design requirements to establish a Gen 2.0 platform with enhanced features such as remote trickle-down content delivery, improvements with the teacher interface for lesson planning and sideloading for publishers.
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    UX Definition (after 1 year of user research)

    Remote IT Management & Content Distribution Concept

    Integrated software to distribute content modules and manage fleets of access points across a large area was designed and later implemented by an external ISV.   An integrated 3g modem option provided connectivity to trickle down content updates remotely across a school district or ministry of education.

    Remote IT Management Actual Design – UX Trade-Offs

    UX trade-offs were made to meet technical, budget and timeline constraints.  A third party ISV was contracted to implement the remote management software based on our UX design specification and negotiated requirements.

     

     

    UX Innovation & Future Scaling

    Use case concepts, storyboards and value propositions were further defined to investigate strategic opportunities to scale the product into additional uses and contexts.  These was concept tested in interviews with potential customers, local OEMs and publishers.   Insights were communicated to product managers and business development specialists. 

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