Design For Good

For this project, I investigated ways to support underprivileged schools in Uganda by providing a cost-effective, responsive, and technological solution that benefits school proprietors, teachers, and students alike. The project was awarded 1st place at the JP Morgan Chase <design for good> Hackathon.

Duration: 12 Hours

Role: UI/UX Design and Research

(team of 6)

Tools: Figma, Fig Jam, Canva, Adobe Illustrator

Deliverables: High-Fidelity Responsive Wireframes and a Research Presentation

Moses, a school proprietor in Wakiso, Uganda, who operates a low-cost private school, wants to participate in Opportunity International's EduQuality program. So what is the design question?
How can technology and innovative strategies help Moses improve teacher retention, teaching practices, and enhance overall educational quality in his low-cost private school?

We were tasked to envision a solution that involves strategies or integration of cost-effective technology, which could:
•Improve teacher professional development & retention
•Improve teacher lesson planning and delivery
•Improve student assessment
•Improve early-grade literacy outcomes
•Improve school administration, including school quality assessments and school development planning

As this tech solution will serve a very wide range of people, we were tasked to design a responsive tool that aimed to help school proprietors or teachers. For this challenge, we were told to assume that every user will have access to the internet, but be mindful of the resource-constrained environment of extremely poor communities. But most importantly, we had to consider how the solution could be adaptable to the varying digital literacy levels of staff and students.

View end result

Meet Jaqueline

A Teacher in Uganda

The largest stakeholders in these schools currently facing struggles are teachers and their students.

The main problems Jaqueline faces from day to day are:

Assessment: Keeping track of student engagement and learning
Lesson Planning: Creating new lesson plans in a timely and efficient manner
Connection: Due to poor electricity, tablets don't always connect or update

Asking the Right Questions

We conducted a brief secondary research, keeping these three main research questions in mind

1. What is Lesson Planning?

2. How can Technology aid Lesson Planning?

3. Where do Students Play a Role?

Here were our key takeaways

Learning objectives are ranked by importance and taught in the same order

Using technology to upload previous lesson plans and topics taught in class

Technology can decrease human error and increase pace of creation

Incorporting student data into lesson plans make them more personalized and effective

Multidisciplinary tool

We understood that the technology incorporated into our solution had to multitask: providing effective lesson plans using student data, adapting to different environments and resource conditions, and, most importantly, being easy and cost-effective to use.

AI Integration
+
Data Collecting Hardware

So, How Does it Work?

1. The system is given examples of effective lesson plans, different components of a lesson plan, and how different factors like class size, duration, and age might affect said lesson plan

2. Uses data from the Uganda curriculum as well as in-class syllabus uploads when offline; when online, incorporates previous lesson plans and student data

3. Constantly updates data when online

4. Gathers student data from in-class participation quizzes and interaction questions through a checkpoint system using the interactive hardware

Hardware Prototype

A smart, easy solar-powered toggle that allows students to answer yes or no, true or false, or questions regarding overall understanding. The toggle transmits this data through Bluetooth signaling and tracks it within the app. Instead of colors, we used icons for better universal understanding.

Cost Breakdown: $5-$10 to create----> Long-term investment, long lifetime

Having our tool researched and scoped out, we designed our final responsive site, keeping the restrictions of AI and the design of the toggle in mind.

01

Go

Home

Our Design System Concept

The yellow was used to emphasize a sense of joy and neural calmness, advocating for anxiety and stress-free schooling, not only for students but also for teachers.

So what happens next?
We hope to see this implemented in the future by Opportunity International!

Contributions

For this project, I worked on researching technology tools for lesson planning, cost breakdown of hardware toggles, and co-designed all wireframes, including making them responsive and interactive

Want to know more?

If you would like more information on our team, research, findings, and analysis, take a look at our research and final presentation below!