ST Math Educator Console

The Product

• ST Math is a PreK-8 visual instructional program that leverages the brain’s innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems through challenging puzzles, non-routine problem-solving, and formative feedback.
• Teachers, Principals, Math Coaches, and Administrators use the ST Math Educator Console to set up classes, create curriculum and assignments, and monitor and evaluate student progress.

Who’s Involved

The Challenges

• The existing product was flash-based, only available on desktops, and visually outdated.
• The complex experience mainly focused on teachers and did not meet the needs of the wider user base of educators, principals, math coaches, lab coordinators, and Administrators.

Our Goals

• Redesign the teacher experience in HTML5, make it fully responsive, improve accessibility, and modernize the UI.
• Create a simplified experience addressing the needs, goals, patterns, and tech-savviness of all user types.

Gathering Info

• Understand all aspects of the existing product and take inventory of all screens.
• Discover the most common pain points of our users.
• Do an analysis of other products in the industry focusing on features, the overall user flow, and UI trends.
• Work with the Product Manager to understand the business needs.

Research

• Participated in user studies in person and remotely to observe and understand the needs of our users.
• Support the User Researcher in creating mockups and prototypes based on the needs of the study and on user feedback.
• Partner with the User Researcher to help develop user personas and functional priorities.

Concepts & Iterations

• Early concepts began with sketches and lo-fi mockups.
• Concepts were adjusted and sometimes abandoned altogether due to findings from the user studies.
• Concepts evolved over time into prototypes and hifi mockups.

UI Library & Style Guide

• Identified what UI elements are needed based on early concepts.
• Utilized existing branding guidelines to help make decisions on a new look and feel.
• The library grew over time as additional features were added to the concept.
• The main goal is to keep a consistent experience, have familiar patterns, visual queues, and recognizable branding.

Outcomes

• A modern and unified UI.
• Accessible on any device.
• An experience for all user types.
• A consistent and predictable experience across roles.
• Optimizing the experience for commonly utilized features for our basic users.
• Allowing the progressive disclosure of advanced features and data as needed.