LEARNING.COM
Adaptive Keyboarding
THE GOAL
Update a previous version of the app with newer frameworks, add gamification and higher quality pedagogy.
Adaptive Keyboarding (previously Prescriptive Keyboarding) is the top used content item from Learning.com's catalog and is aimed at helping students gain typing skills.
My Role: Product Design, Illustration, Front-End Development, Game Design Architecture
Tools: Adobe CC, Sketch, Angular, Bootstrap, SCSS, HTML
EMPATHIZE
Learning to type was boring and repetitive to students and teachers needed a way to have the app remind students of their posture and correct finger positioning while also wanting to stay engaged and practicing this critical skill.
Adaptive Keyboarding provided an opportunity to create a better app experience and offer increased value to teachers and students. I helped lead focus groups with stakeholders and customers to ensure we understood the pros and cons of teaching touch typing, pain points within the classroom and the value of new features. After several rounds of interviews, I collaborated with the product owner and educational specialist to generate user flows for the administrator, teacher and student experience.
Building a new gamification system required collaboration with the engineering team to create architectural maps that helped define our core game loops. These needed to reinforce the pedagogy and strengthen skill building and learning objectives for students. I worked closely with engineers, curriculum designers, product managers and other stakeholders to sculpt the ideal user experience.
PROTOTYPE + TEST
Students in grades 3-8 are often assigned Adaptive Keyboarding year over year. In order to keep the app engaging for students, we came up with two adventure themes for students to experience (grades 3-5 & 6-8) with a badging system, in-app games to unlock and personalized dashboard to track their progress. Additionally, the app includes a prescriptive algorithm that adapts to the needs of each student to focus on areas for improvement.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Build a core game loop to earn game time and badges as students continue to learn typing skills year over year
Build an ‘arcade’ of games that help reinforce typing skills and are fun for students
Allow the UI to grow with them by changing as they age-up and level-up
OUTCOMES
The release of Adaptive Keyboarding resulted in an increase in customer renewals & successful student outcomes. Adaptive Keyboarding also won Best In Show for ISTE 2017 (EdTech Award) and had millions of launches within the first few months of going live.
“This is phenomenal! I wish more dashboards were like this because it allows me to focus on the important things… teaching and helping my students.”
The success with Adaptive Keyboarding has set a new benchmark for other app research and development within the company. Additionally, the board of directors and executive team were pleased to know that the project proved the ability to shift content creation in-house, saving significant costs for new content in the future. The feedback from teachers and students was overwhelmingly positive with regards to teaching essential keyboarding skills while making learning fun. One larger district reported a 55% increase in student outcomes since using Adaptive Keyboarding.