Teaching Resource Database
Free and accessible climate change education.
The Final Product ↓
TEAM
Product Manager
2 Developers
2 Designers
UX Researcher
MY ROLE
End-to-end Design
User Interviews
Usability Testing
QA
INTRODUCTION
Teachers need easy access to climate teaching materials.
1.
Climate change is a complex teaching subject.
2.
Teachers have limited prep time.
3.
Teachers need climate materials that seamlessly integrate into their curriculum.
To achieve this, the search and discovery process for finding teaching materials must be efficient and straightforward.
PROBLEM
The current page structures causes inefficiency, confusion, and wasted time for teachers.
SubjectToClimate (STC) has two feature pages for teaching materials:
📚 Lesson Plans by Teachers
Contains only lesson plans made by STC
📒 Resource Database
Contains lesson plans, unit plans, and activities made by STC
Contains external resources from STC's partner providers
Focus groups and interviews revealed that users were unclear about the content of each page and the difference between materials made by STC versus external resources.
Design Shortfalls
The design is visually overwhelming and lacks hierarchy, scattering key information that teachers need across different areas instead of highlighting it prominently.
SOLUTION
Overhaul the current Resource Database.
Redesign the page for intuitive, user-friendly navigation and prioritize clarity in information presentation.
Reorganize content categorization: distinctively divide external content from STC content.
INITIAL REDESIGN
Design goal: to simplify lesson planning and browsing.
Redesigned Tile Cards
The original tile cards were inconsistent in both information layout and variable card height, which made it difficult for users to identify information.
Add Context to the Feature
User interviews revealed that users frequently used Resource Database and Lesson Plans by Teachers pages interchangeably, with little understanding of the difference between the two.
USER TESTING & ITERATIONS
Although the redesigned Resource Database page is now distinct and clearer, the filters and search parameters remain confusing.
Guided Language
Users are now textually encouraged to search with a variety of query categories.
Confusing Selected Filters
Users had difficulty locating in-line filter tags, so we created a new section for selected filters that are easily visible and removable.
New Page Names
At the conclusion of the focus group, users completed a survey to identify which page names they found most understandable and intuitive.
A simple, credible resource library for climate change teaching materials.
Index Landing
Simplified Filter Options
"Load More" to Replace Pagination
OUTCOMES
Small but consistent improvements in user experience and satisfaction 👍
Survey Results: "Were you able to locate what you needed today?" replies surged by 24%.
Reduced U-turns by 31% from the new Teaching Resource Library
REFLECTION
Learning from failures.
The Teaching Resource Library houses over 2,500 resources. This was my first experience working with such a large database.
Aside from collaborating closely with developers, this project improved my ability to work cross-team with resource developers, SEO specialists, marketing managers, and more.
More importantly, this experience taught me the critical importance of quality assurance. Due to our team's inexperience with major launches, we failed to thoroughly QA check before the launch.
For a few weeks post-launch, we had to address a significant backlog of tickets, many of which could have been avoided with better QA practices.
In addition to QA-ing on the development site, we missed the critical step of conducting a thorough audit of the original page design.