Making Social Emotional Learning desirable
School of Wonder provides minimal and practical tools for Social Emotional Learning to educators.
The Problem
With the rise of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives throughout the education system, educators feel overwhelmed with the time and work involved in teaching this content, due to lack of time and/or funds. There are hours of training involved and too much content in the program to become acquainted with.
Our Solution
What educators need is not another program.
We redesigned School of Wonder’s curriculum with an emphasis on its minimal time investment. The products will be simple tools to aid the educator within their existing curriculum as opposed to entire lessons to implement.
The activities are short and sweet, and virtually led by School of Wonder experts and educators become participants rather than facilitators.
My Role
I got to be a part of ideating and collaborating with the product team as well as my UX roles.
In addition to participating in the product journey, I was in charge of the UX processes, conducting interviews, making competitive analyses and developing wireframes.
Design Process
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Quantitative and qualitative interviews with 12 educators from diverse backgrounds
Affinity mapping to clarify user motivations and pain points
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Determined pain points in current site map
Restructured site map to reflect solutions to pain points
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Low/Mid/High fidelity wireframes for desktop and mobile
Iterating based on feedback
Prototypes
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Conducted usability tests with 7 participants
Mapped out pain points
Iterated on areas based on user feedback
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Worked with product team to create branding concepts based on company values and stories
Produced full design system with component library
Created hand drawn illustrations used throughout the website
Competitive Analysis
Research Insights
We targeted and interviewed educators. These were public and private school teachers, home schooling parents, alternative program educators, afterschool directors and camp leaders. We wanted to address:
Major pain points when implementing an external program into an existing curriculum.
What educators really want and need from a Social-Emotional Learning program.
What they like from SEL programs they’ve experienced in the past.
We started interviews expecting to hear positive outlooks toward Social Emotional Learning. We actually discovered that for such an essential initiative, many educators had surprisingly indifferent attitudes toward it. Upon delving deeper, we learned that:
Adding another curriculum into their already busy workload was not readily welcomed.
Even if they found time to look through the program, there was too much training and content that they found it overwhelming.
Alternative educators had different pain points altogether.
They did not have access to sufficient SEL resources due to the lack of funds and lack of knowledge.
Ideating
It took a team to define the user problem using the interviews and qualitative research.
We aligned the user problem with our business goals, which is to develop a product that sets itself apart from other SEL programs in the industry by being time-efficient, low-effort and low cost.
Then we determined who our users would be using the personas below.
Personas
The Solution
Some concepts we incorporated into our designs to help relieve users’ feelings of being overwhelmed.
Emphasize the minimal time investment in implementing the tools.
Keep the content of the website simple and straightforward to reduce frustration during exploration of the website.
Provide samples of the content to give users some security about what they’re choosing.
Break curriculum into smaller, more affordable parts so the content is more digestible. Also, users won’t feel like they’re making some kind of huge commitment or buying into a ‘program.’
Include an extensive FAQ section to provide utmost support.
The Problem and the Solution
Problem
According to Interviews, users stated that most social emotional learning programs look and feel very similar so it’s hard to choose.
HiFi Solution
A message that outlines what makes School of Wonder different from competitors
Statements that users would find most valuable in an external education program.
Problem
Users are not willing to invest their time to prepare a lengthy lesson outside of their normal curriculum.
HiFi Solution
Empathize with users that their time is valuable
Offer a solution that is best not only for their work, but for their well being.
Problem
When shopping for a curriculum, users want some kind of assurance that they are buying something they will be satisfied with.
HiFi Solution
Displayed samples of content to help users make an informed decision
Problem
When shopping for a curriculum, users want some kind of assurance that they are buying something they will be satisfied with.
HiFi Solution
The program is divided into chapters that users can purchase separately so that they don’t feel like they are heavily committing to anything.
FAQs was added to promote a sense of safety when users are trying to make their decision about their purchase.
Usability Testing & the User Journey
We conducted usability tests of the entire process, from the browsing of the website to testing out the product itself. A total of 4 users tested the product, including myself.
Here is a synthesis of the user journey.
Overall, School of Wonder’s SEL program fulfilled the essential needs of the educators, from the simplicity of the web page to the promise and follow-through of the product requiring little preparation time.
Users’ were largely concerned about the mystery about not knowing what they were getting before purchasing.
We were afraid the repetitive nature of the activities might become a pain point but users liked the routine for their classroom management.
Illustrations
All illustrations on the High fidelity designs were created by me, as well as the illustrations on the products pdfs themselves.
Future Impact
We hope School of Wonder will be able to provide educators with the simplicity that is essential within the hectic school day.
We anticipate a steady volume of sales not only because the content is easy and desirable, but because the affordable prices will encourage users to explore further purchases. The affordability will also attract alternative educators in addition to traditional teachers and Social-Emotional curriculum will be available to all settings.
