PRODUCT DESIGN

Summary:

A huge part of students in education is understanding the practical aspects of teaching and learning by observing students and educators in a classroom setting. Learning directly from mentor teachers who work with children every day is an invaluable experience. This project identified a problem and a solution that involves the gaps in finding practical experiences for incoming educators in the field using the Stanford d.school Design Thinking Process.

Tools:

• Adobe XD

• Trello / Padlet

• Lucid chart

• Google Slides

• Miro Board

Contribution:

• Ideation

• UX Research and Writing

• Journey Map

• User flow

• Product design

Background:

They say innovations are mostly a product of frustrations. Graduate students are required to take 200 hours of student teaching and 100 hours of observation (different grade levels and schools) to experience and learn from in-service teachers. Finding these opportunities was not always an easy task. Often the process is tedious and can be frustrating.

Stage 1: EMPATHY

During the initial stage, our team conducted several interviews with pre-service teachers and in-service teachers to learn more about the process of acquiring student teaching and observation opportunities.

We mapped out their journeys to help us identify gains and pain points.

Stage 2: DEFINE

The interviews provided authentic insights from the key players in the mentorship and observation landscape of education. There were numerous iterations of the problem statement as we studied each journey which ultimately brought us to our problem statement

Stage 3: IDEATE

We converge several solutions that would make the process seamless and diverge to a solution. We looked at the learning cycle of educators who are either learning to be part of the industry or who are already are part of the industry.

We propose integrating powerful tools to match in-service educators with teaching education program students for mentorship and observation opportunities.

Stage 4: PROTOTYPE

The fun part! Because design thinking is an iterative process, we revisited the previous stages numerous times. We went back to the data collected during the empathy stage, the ideas we generated in the ideation stage, and refer back to our problem statement. All these stages helped us understand our user flow and create a prototype that will make the process as seamless as possible.

The Final Product

Currently, we are in the stage of beta-testing, promoting, and launching the product to help facilitate mentorship and observation opportunities and ultimately develop well-equipped and empowered educators.

UP NEXT:

For more information about matchEd, please visit our website at www.match-ed.com