Designing an AI Interface Accessible for Students With Little Digital Literacy
End-to-End Product Design
GUARDIAN INC.
Guardian Inc. is a startup dedicated to social impact, developing servers with educational databases and an AI tutor for students in areas without access to the internet to get the same quality education we do.
BACKGROUND
This is a edtech startup I worked on as a founding product designer.
TIMELINE
Fall 2024 - Present
THE DESIGN TEAM
Aaron Lee, PM
Devin Hayden, Designer
Lauryn Kinsella, Designer
Teri Shim, Designer Lead
SKILLS
Product-Thinking, Prototyping, Interface Design, User Research, User Testing
THE PROTOTYPE
A Tutor to Guide Students Through Exploring Their Curriculum
THE PROBLEM
There Are Many Areas Around the World Without Access to Quality Education Because of a Lack of Internet Connection
The internet gives us so much access to timely and quality resources. Heck, we’re using the internet right now (hi). But there are still many places around the world that don’t have reliable access to the internet.
We want to bring quality, timely, and organized educational materials to students and teachers in these areas. Hence, we started Guardian Inc.
We’re working on developing an intra-net edge computing device that essentially works as a local server. Students are able to use donated, old devices to connect to the server’s network, recreating the internet.
On this server we have thousands of educational materials from Khan Academy, TedX, and more that are all processed by an LLM that can then support teachers and students with their learning and research.
RESEARCH
Learning How to Structure Conversations and Interpret Observations
Working with post-doctoral research scholar Dr. Ariel Han, we designed research guides and questions to hand off to people on-site.
A snippet of some user interview questions focused on finding challenges and abundances in the students’ and educators’ lives to pinpoint what features would be most impactful.
USER INTERVIEW
Designing For Our Users: Interviewing a Student from South Sudan
Recently we got to have our first user interview with Luka. He's a 6' 4" basketball player who taught himself how to code attending South Sudan's top boarding school. From this interview we came away with two main takeaways.
A Computer Lab With No Computers
The school's computer lab has no computers (I KNOW, we asked twice).
The reason behind this is unknown, we have future plans to talk with admin to understand exactly why.
Funding?
No internet and so no meaning?
Lack of space?
Incoming computers?
Bridging The Gaps in Learning
Luka, aspiring to study computer programming in the US, is self-teaching through four external sources:
A friend at Princeton (he talks to while at home).
Programs for university prep.
Robotics at a local university.
Internet access at home in Kenya.
Since not all students have internet at home, recreating these external resources on our device can help more students explore and grow their passions like Luka.
FEATURE IDEATION
Going From Big to Small and Designing a Feasible Yet Effective Version 1
For version 1 of the product (we tested the first 3 devices with ChatGPT’s UIUX), I first led the team through some brainstorming exercises.
We were brainstorming based on: Video observation, the knowledge many students knew how to use WhatsApp but not much more, a familiarity with devices like Rachel, and a need for a lab section.
[a] Starting big, coming up with ideas regardless of feasibility and more for the dream platform.
[b] Prioritizing v1 features that are feasible for engineering, provide a foundation, serve as testing benchmarks.
[c] This led to our low-fis and general user flow.
COLLABORATION AND COMMUNICATION
Organizing Critiques, Group Work Sessions, Open Communication Channels, and Stand-ups
I had worked with developers and PMs in the past but this was the first time I was doing it in a fast-growth startup environment where we all had to take high levels of ownership over project aspects beyond interface design.
Together, we learned to organize…
[a] Weekly stand-ups: Creating slideshows to explain functionalities in concise ways with the developers.
[b] Critiques: Here’s our little talent show section on Figma for designers to be able to give and receive feedback.
WHERE TO FROM HERE
Conducting More Market Research, Working on v2, and Refining Designs
In conclusion, it was decided that NGS would go with Formstack for a near-term solution.
Testing
We're working closely with the non-profits to start doing some heavy-duty testing of our pilots out in South Sudan.
Market Research
We’re going to continue conducting more market research, talking with different professionals to gauge where we meet be able to use this technology in the private sector.
Iterating
We’re continually iterating and revising our design, trying to find more ways to test with users and conducting interviews with students (like Luka! Super cool basketball player).