Overview
The Curio Authoring Tool project embarked on a mission to revolutionize the content creation process within the educational technology sector, specifically targeting the needs of K12 education. By introducing a comprehensive, user-centric design, the project addressed critical challenges in collaborative content development, streamlining workflows for content creators, reviewers, and designers.
This project is a part of the Curio Learning Management System
ROLE & DURATION
Lead Product Designer | Saal.ai
UX Research, Design Strategy, UX Design, Information Architecture
Apr 2019 – Aug 2019
Background
Curio is an innovative AI-based Learning Management System (LMS) that leverages gamification and personalized learning paths to revolutionize educational experiences. It supports English and Arabic languages, offering interactive and AI-assisted learning to K12 students in Science, Mathematics, English and Arabic.
Curio encapsulates a range of dynamic features designed to enrich the learning experience, including leadership dashboards, and specialized sections for learning, practicing, playing, and an interactive ask/chat feature. The system employs concept maps tailored to the curriculum, ensuring that each student’s educational needs are met with precision and care.
For parents, Curio offers the ability to monitor their child’s progress closely, facilitating seamless communication with teachers and access to comprehensive dashboards that highlight achievements and areas for improvement.
Schools benefit from robust admin services, including registration functionalities for teachers and students, class assignments, and overall educational management tools.
Teachers are equipped with advanced class management capabilities, enabling them to identify students who may be falling behind and recommend tailored learning paths to support their educational journey.
The Challenge
Despite its extensive array of features, Curio has a gap in its system – the absence of a core feature for creating and managing content seamlessly across its various segments (Learn, Practice, Play, Ask).
With over a million questions processed, Curio faced challenges in content creation and management due to its expansive scale. The existing process, heavily reliant on external authors and Excel-based management, led to inefficiencies and difficulties in quality control, especially for complex subjects like math and science.
Evaluating the Current Landscape
In Curio platform’s content creation process, it becomes evident that there are several areas ripe for optimization. The journey mapping exercise, aimed at identifying pain points in the question creation process, uncovers a series of inefficiencies and challenges that contributors face.
Anatomy of a Task
Understanding the anatomy of a task helped me to capture essential parameters, ensuring that each task aligns perfectly with the educational objectives and user requirements. Here’s an overview of how the freelance author would receive a task to draft questions.
Anatomy of a Question
Understanding the anatomy of a question is pivotal before designing an authoring tool for Curio, as it lays the foundational framework on which the entire content creation process is built.
User Profiles
To thoroughly comprehend the process of content creation, it’s crucial to understand the diverse roles played by various stakeholders. Recognizing that one individual may assume multiple roles in this ecosystem is also essential. This interplay of roles not only underpins the collaborative nature of the tool but also highlights the complexity and dynamism of the content creation process.
Content Owner
Submits and track content requests based on subject, difficulty level and number of questions.
Tasks Performed:
– Initiate content creation requests based on curriculum needs and learning objectives.
– Prioritize and assign tasks to authors, reviewers, and other contributors.
– Monitor the progress of content creation and ensure adherence to educational
standards and timelines.
Author
Efficiently manage multiple requests and duplicate content when necessary.
Tasks Performed:
– Create engaging and educational questions in line with the specified topics and sub-topics.
– Adapt content creation based on feedback from reviewers and content owners.
– Ensure questions are structured correctly, especially for subjects requiring special characters or formats.
Reviewer
Review content alignment with requests.
Tasks Performed:
– Evaluate questions for alignment with the initial request and educational standards.
– Provide constructive feedback to authors for content improvement.
– Ensure the integrity and quality of the content before it moves to the next stage.
Proof Readers – English and Arabic
Check and correct language and grammar.
Tasks Performed:
– Check and correct grammatical errors and sentence structures in the content.
– Ensure language clarity and readability for the intended student audience.
Translators
Translate content accurately.
Tasks Performed:
– Accurately translate content while maintaining the original context and educational value.
– Adapt content to suit cultural and linguistic nuances of the target language.
– Collaborate with content creators to clarify any ambiguities in the source material.
Graphic Designers
Create and associate images with questions.
Tasks Performed:
– Design compelling and relevant graphics and images to accompany and enhance the educational content.
– Collaborate with content creators to ensure visual elements align with the learning objectives.
Publishers
Oversee the final content and its readiness for app integration.
Tasks Performed:
– Oversee the final assembly and layout of content before publication.
– Ensure that all components of the content (text, graphics, translations) are integrated cohesively.
– Conduct the final review and approval before content is published on the Curio platform.
Design Strategy
To develop a robust, user-friendly authoring tool within Curio that streamlines the content creation process from creation to publication, fostering effective collaboration among various roles, and maintaining high content quality and integrity.
Focus on creating a streamlined, web-based application that:
Conceptualization
In the conceptualization phase for Curio’s authoring tool, a significant emphasis was placed on developing a robust Information Architecture, crafting detailed wireframes and an effort to consolidate a list of actions based on the status of the question.
While an entire system is thought through, We want to ensure that the system is put to use as early as possible. We picked the main features (marked in green) for the 1st release (MVP).
The Solution (MVP)
The focus has been on developing a functional yet simplistic version of the tool, ensuring it delivers immediate value to its users while maintaining the flexibility to evolve based on user feedback and emerging needs.
Introduced a carefully designed Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Curio’s authoring tool. This MVP, while streamlined, encapsulates the essential features needed to address the core challenges identified in the content creation and management process. This approach not only allows for rapid deployment and testing but also sets the foundation for continuous improvement and scalability in future iterations.
Question Categorization
Empowered by a sophisticated filtering system, this page offers an intuitive way for users to effortlessly sort and organize questions based on subject, difficulty level, and curriculum relevance, streamlining the content creation and review process for a more efficient workflow.
One Page for All the Contributors
Designed to cater to the needs of all contributors involved in the content creation process. This singular, comprehensive page serves as a central hub for various activities such as translations, proofreading, commenting, and previewing.
Designed with future iterations in mind, a provision to auto-translate text is considered when designing the interface so one step in the content creation process is reduced.
Enhanced Collaboration and Efficiency
In my quest to optimize the content creation process within Curio’s authoring tool, we’ve introduced a set of key features designed to enhance collaboration and increase operational efficiency.
These features – duplicating questions, previewing content, tracking activities, and a dedicated comments section.
Quality Control
To streamline the content creation process and minimize confusion, Curio’s authoring tool introduces a feature that enables specific actions based on the current status of a question. This feature is designed to enforce a structured and rigorous process, ensuring that each question undergoes the necessary stages of review, refinement, and approval before being published.
As a question progresses through different stages, the tool automatically updates its status, triggering the next set of permissible actions. This automation helps in maintaining a seamless flow and reducing manual oversight.
Results
The implementation of the Curio MVP Authoring Tool brought quantifiable improvements and significant value, contributing to Curio’s acquisition by Alef Education. This significantly enhanced Curio’s offerings to public schools and the Ministry of Education.
Project Learnings
It becomes evident that the project was not only a technological venture but also a rich learning experience on multiple business fronts.
Designing for Collaboration: This gave insights into the services that require teamwork to accomplish a task. This changed my point of view on how grossly I underestimated the process of creating content before.
Scoping of the Minimum Viable Product: Learned the criticality of accurately defining the MVP scope, focusing on core functionalities that meet primary user needs while allowing room for future enhancements.
Designing for value: Gained insight into the significance of designing a product not just for immediate functionality, but also with a focus on its potential for acquisition, emphasizing features and scalability that enhance overall business value.
These learnings have been instrumental in the tool’s success and also provided valuable insights into managing and growing a product in the competitive field of educational technology
