PRODUCT DESIGN AT RISE
Kumi
Introduction
Kumi is an innovative learning management system for lower-income middle and high schools. By including innovative learning technologies through a community-based platform, accounts for all the integral members of a lower-income community.
Role: UX Design Intern
Skills: UX Design, Visual Design, User Testing
Timeline: 8 weeks
Product Managers: Ushna Arshad Khan, Sasha Smolyansky, Johnny Urosevic
Designers: Tam (Tyler) Tran, Samuel Huang, Yasiris Oritz
Developers: Bao Pham, Rutvik Parekh, Celia Zhou, Riley Champion, Christie Ruales, Zhiying Li, Dhruvil Parikh
Context
After the transition to online learning due to COVID-19, a lot of lower-income schools, have been impacted negatively largely due to not having a set online platform for students. These schools particularly can not afford specific platforms like Blackboard or Canvas. So, schools have been using emails, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, etc to make up for this. However, these come with their own set of issues such as not being personalized to a school, technical problems, and difficulties.
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Because of this a couple of students decided to create Kumi, a low-cost, innovative Learning Management System for lower-income schools.
McKinsey&Co Research Statistics
The Problem
Currently, low-income schools, such as The Seeds School, have been using a plethora of platforms for online education. Not having a personalized and streamlined platform during COVID-19 can cause an overwhelming, disengaging, and disconnected learning experience.
Because of this a couple of students decided to create Kumi, a low-cost, innovative Learning Management System for lower-income schools.
The Solution
Because of this a couple of students decided to create Kumi, a low-cost, innovative Learning Management System for lower-income schools.
How might we...
How might we seamlessly connect students to crucial information about their classes?
User Research + Insights
Before diving into the user research, we wanted to have a better understanding of the limitations of current learning management systems (LMS). After reviewing multiple forums and sites we distilled the issues into a couple of points.
Afterwards, to truly understand how high school students find the most crucial information about their classes we talked to real highschoolers. And this is what we found out.
Identifying Key Requirements
Turning research insights into product goals
Our team gathered user research data from our partnered school to further understand the stakeholders’ and users’ needs. We found out that a lot of LMS systems and users feel that they currently lack personalization to users and the school, visual cues to help guide students, helpful integrations, and digestible content.
Initial Sketches
Final Designs
Log in
Allows students, teacher and administrators a simple and intuitive way to log onto the LMS.
Dashboard
Students are able to quickly find important notifications and due dates for their assignments.
Course Navigation
Students are able to quickly find important notifications and due dates for their assignments.
Class Info
Students are able to get into the specifics in terms of content for each of their classes.
Assignments
Students would be led to assignments they would want more information or to submit it.
Submissions
Students will be able to submit their assignments from this page.
Graded Assignment
Students would be led to their graded assignments and feedback.
Final Prototypes
Dashboard Navigation
Course Navigation
Course Tile Customization
Full Walk Through
Learnings
The Kumi team will be going through the remaining phases in order for the product to ship. The next steps would include refinement of administrators user flow and features, conducting user testing for teacher’s point of view, and lastly, implement the next set of key features (discussions page, in-app virtual classes, etc)!
What I learned
1. Multiple stakeholders
We thought as if each stakeholder was independent of each without thinking of them as an entire system
2. Prioritization
With the limited time we had, we learned that we needed to figure out what was essential to the platform and approach that first
What I would do next time
1. User goals comes first
Before developing each feature, we need to ensure that we prioritize what the user wants the entire time instead of our own assumptions of what we think that feature should have
2. Communication framework
This was the first time I worked with developers so I need to explore different ways to ensure that our designs got implemented properly
