In an ongoing effort for Curriculum Pathways (K12 educational software company owned by SAS) to offer the best educational resources to teachers and students, a complete Algebra and Geometry course needed to be created. This would address Common Core State Standards and use video, animation, text and interactive widgets to learn essential algebraic and geometric concepts. It would also offer a means of assessing student understanding with a quiz at the end of each lesson.
Branding image created for Algebra landing page
My Role
UI/UX design, wireframing and prototyping, Illustration, animation, Visual Design
Team
Project manager, developers, tester, and myself as the lead UI/UX designer
Problem
Design a template and instructional resources for math specialists to create an online Algebra and Geometry course. Design needs included all branding, an extensive library of images, in-house videos, animations, practice problems, a large variety of interactive widgets, and quizzes.
Solution
Due to the sheer size and scope of this project (53 Algebra and 6 Geometry lessons) it became a multi-year effort that had to be done in stages. Once all the needs were specced out by project manager and content specialists for a particular lesson, I would meet to go over the best approach to turn an instructional need into something visual and concrete.
We called the various instructional elements "Widgets" because they were a standalone item that a student interacted with and they all had to fit within the same design system.
Widget Design
Dozens of various widgets went into these courses. After many design iterations I finalized all mockups in Photoshop then re-created them in CSS to be handed off to the developer.
After the developer made it functional, each item would then be turned into a reusable widget for inclusion in other lessons within the course template.
Process
Research: what are the needs of math teachers who are teaching this material?
To understand the needs of the math teachers and students, regular meetings were held as a team. User surveys with area teachers were conducted and relayed back to our team. I had the opportunity to field test our products at a local high school. Observing math students using it proved very valuable as the product underwent further iterations.
More branding images for Algebra and Geometry
Side by side comparison of the two courses
