LITERATOR

App redesign

 

Overview

Literator is an app for teachers created by a teacher, that incorporates F&P questions, levels and tracks student progress. (The Fountas & Pinnell system is a literacy system consisting of questions that determines a students reading level from A-Z.)


For this group project, I partnered with two UX designers to collect and synthesize data to address user needs. I reached out to over 50+ teachers for interviews and asked questions based on their current pain points that led to ideation and our design decision. 

 

My Role

UX Designer

Duration

1 month

 

Problem

Teacher retention

Teachers have downloaded the Literator app but prefer to use paper instead. Hypothesis from the client include:

  • Students learn best when meeting 1:1 with teacher.

  • The ideal amount of time to meet with a student is for at least 2 minutes once a week.

  • A scheduling feature will help teacher's plan out who they can meet weekly.

“Some teachers don’t even open their emails; they think it’s too much trouble.”

— Ms.Glick, Kindergarten teacher

A+ App

 

Teachers use apps to communicate progress to their administrators. With competitive analysis I can understand aspects where Literator can improve.

  1. Literator incorporates the F&P System

  2. It helps teachers with memorizing the F&P questions

  3. It shows the progress of each students reading levels

Teacher interviews

 

We created a survey, sent cold emails and traveled across the city to talk to teachers. Here are some key discoveries from 8 qualitative interviews:

  1. The F&P system has been difficult for teachers to adjust to.

  2. The current system only lets teachers see half of their students in a week.

  3. Teachers confer with students by grouping them based on their skill levels and needs.

  4. Within the groups, teachers have students skill swap and help each other succeed.

“Classes were only 60 minutes long and I would have 15 minutes to have 1-on-1 time with students. So I would group 5-7 students together by skill level and talk to them all at once.”

— Ms.Catchings, 7th-9th grade literacy teacher

THE VISION

New and improved features

Project learnings

I learned that communicating with the client is very important. In the future, it is important to include the client in our design sprints. I also learned that not every sprint needs a drastic redesign. Current users were happy with the current app but the key is figuring out how to improve it even more.