Upepo: A Playful Learning Platform for children

Identifying Goals & Objectives

After hopping on multiple calls with the founders, product manager and key members of the team, we identified key goals and requirements.

The primary objective of this project was to appeal to potential investors, but the founders also wanted to test the waters with a beta release.

As such, our goals were to:

Create a scalable product.
Release and test with a controlled user group (school students).
Lay out features and long term plans as we went.

Insights

These are the key insights that defined the launch version of the product:

A parent and child playing with building blocks.

Hands on & Hands off learning

Some parents were looking for activities they could enjoy with their younger kids, and some just wanted a productive way to keep them busy and engaged. Hands-on project tutorials are a comfortable in-between, allowing for both.

A group of people with heart, message, and like icons around them.

Project Gallery

Our target audience consists of students who are just beginning to express their individuality and explore social connections. It became apparent very quickly that children wanted to show off their work and also see what their peers created.

Curated Content from a Reliable source

The hardest part about finding educational resources for children outside of their school is the vast number of options, often leading to choice fatigue. Highlighting Upepo's facilitators and their qualifications will increase credibility.

Rewards System

Children are greatly motivated by competing and collaborating with their peers. I looked into both structural and content gamification to assess which suited our present needs better, and worked with the PM to implement a reward system.

A teacher pointing at a chalkboard while students watch.

Facilitating

Lots of parents are hesitant, and say that they aren’t qualified to assist their children. We can provide easy-to-follow tutorials, and information about best practices via the newsletter which will remain active and help generate traffic.

Educational & Academic Content

Supplement their academics by making content that is relevant to the school syllabus. We have literacy experts on board our team who can help translate formal academic content into playful project based work.

Process

Over a call with the team, I took notes and mapped out this cost-benefit analysis to help us understand what the scope of our project could look like.

This was an essential step that helped us define our MVP.

After a discussion about which features to prioritize, I created a User Story map to flesh out the application a bit more.

Sticky Notes containing ideas are mapped onto a graph with effort on the y-axis and Value on the x-axis.

User Stories: sticky notes containing all possible actions a user can take on the app.

Wireframes

A quick summary of Version 1: Our MVP

Our main goal was to get basic functionality up and running, so my focus was on keeping it simple and designing an easy to use online learning platform while building towards a scalable product.

Version 1 included the following features:

Course Browser & Index,
Individual Course Pages,
User Profiles,
‘Like’ button,
Student Project Submissions,
Project Gallery
Settings

Version 2: Challenges and Rewards

Goals: Introduce Gamification, and address bugs

Features:
Reward System using Experience Points,
Leaderboard,
Time sensitive Challenges,
Medals,
Course Progress,
Notifications,
‘Try This’ button on project submissions

An important difference between v1 and v2 was that we removed the ability to comment. With young audiences, there's a need for moderation, and that was out of scope for us.

Progress Tracking

Keeping in mind our end users, I used large buttons wherever possible, and emphasized graphics and images over text.

The Profile tab contains a summary of the child's activity on the app. This includes Experience Points scored, courses completed, medals won, and most recent project submissions.

The Leaderboard is linked in the top right corner as well, next to the notifications and settings icons.

My List contains projects that have been added by the user, along with their corresponding XP points and a simple progress bar.

Challenges Won functions as a summary of all projects that have been completed.

The Leaderboard has 2 tabs showing rankings for the current month, as well as an all time scoreboard. This was so that newly onboarded children didn't feel daunted by the high scores of long-time users, but still had something to work towards.

Project Details

Fairly straightforward. Initial wireframes did not contain a progress bar, but we found that adding one greatly improved engagement.

Each project screen also contains a section where past submissions can be viewed and liked.

An alternate version of projects called Challenges was added in the second round of revisions to the app. These are projects with end-dates, and typically ask open-ended questions about various topics ranging from Global Warming to Mental Health.

Since these Challenges are mini-contests, the Submissions section doesn't show up until winners are announced.

Discovery

Our Discover and Home tabs are designed with browsing in mind. We have a project gallery, trending courses and challenges, popular categories, and projects recommended according to recently completed ones, and filtered by the child's age range.

We also worked with illustrators on the project thumbnails, and it made a world of a difference.

Utilities

The Notifications screen is used for updates about project approvals and winners, number of likes on a project submission, etc. I made the decision to add slightly more playful icons to make it more friendly.

The Settings screen is where you can log out, access FAQ's, and have parents contact us about any concerns they may have. If in the future we decide to add an online store for DIY Kits and such, it would likely be password protected behind the Parents Corner to be child-proof.