UX Research
UX Design
Building Teacher Communities Globally
Creating a collaborative space where teachers discover proven classroom strategies and build supportive communities. Bridging the gap between isolated educators and actionable teaching methods that work.
Industry :
EdTech
Client :
Faved
Project Duration :
June 2021 - August 2021
Tools :
Adobe XD, Figma, FigJam
SUMMARY
Challenge
Teachers had nowhere to find practical, teacher-led solutions that actually work in real classrooms.
Target Audience
Teachers in developing regions who desperately needed collaborative learning communities.
Impact
We built an intuitive mobile app where teachers could finally discover, rate, and share teaching practices that made a difference, aiming for 1,000 ideas by 2022.
THE REAL PROBLEM BEHIND THE WORK
Here's what kept us up at night: how do you get 1,000 school-tested solutions into teachers' hands through one platform? Teachers were stuck researching alone, with no community to bounce ideas off or get real feedback. We talked to two groups: newer teachers hunting for creative lesson plans, and seasoned pros wanting to share what they'd learned over decades.
Both were frustrated by the same thing: outdated, theory-heavy methods that students just tuned out. Through journey mapping, we spotted exactly where teachers got stuck, from that first "wait, there's a better way?" moment through actually trying something new in their classroom. Our persona Kizza just wanted a community and practical tools to help her students actually engage.
HOW WE SOLVED IT
We started sketching: four simple navigation buttons, a home screen that felt personal, not overwhelming. Then we did card sorting sessions with actual teachers, watching them organize content taught us how their minds actually worked, which completely shaped our navigation. We tested everything: author names, practice titles, reading times, how many people favorited something.
The real breakthrough came from MIT education experts and an Apple UX designer who didn't hold back on feedback. We built high-fidelity prototypes and tested them with a teacher in South Africa who was brutally honest about what confused her. That honesty led to our biggest improvements: personalized onboarding that asks teachers upfront what matters to them, and draft visibility so they never lose half-written practices again.
THE IMPACT WE MADE
Onboarding became our secret weapon. Instead of dumping teachers into an overwhelming feed, we asked upfront: what matters to you? Within seconds, teachers saw practices that actually spoke to their classroom challenges, showing them we understood their world.
We also fixed something that seems small but drove teachers crazy: losing half-written practices. You'd start documenting a brilliant lesson idea, get pulled away by actual teaching, and forget it existed. We made drafts visible right on your practice list, and suddenly teachers could pick up where they left off. Completion rates jumped.
WHAT WE LEARNED
This project stretched us in the best way. Combining interview data, journey maps, and card sorting taught us how to really listen to users, not just hear them. Having MIT and Apple experts critique our work was nerve-wracking but invaluable, they caught mistakes we'd have shipped otherwise.
The biggest lesson? Ditch boring usability tests. We created interactive activities instead of just asking questions, and the insights were completely different. We saw how teachers actually behaved, not how they thought they behaved, and that testing framework became our go-to for every project since.
