Project Scope
School administrators need to know that Get More Math is having a positive impact on their student’s test scores in standardized state assessments.
- My Role
- Lead UX Designer and initial Project Manager.
- The Team
- Core product team with the addition of the CEO, subject matter experts from the training and support team as well as math content specialists from the problem authoring team.
- Project Duration
- This was one of the product team's primary objectives for the year.
Objectives
- User Objectives
- Teachers can easily identify which standards an individual student is struggling with to provide targeted instruction.
- Teachers can easily identify groups of students per standard for grouped instruction.
- School Administrators can easily identify the performance of their teachers and subsequent students at each grade level.
- District Administrators can easily identify the performance of their schools and subsequent students at each grade level.
- Business Objectives
- Increased adoption of Get More Math by administrators after piloting
- Expand our market share in Texas and retain current high-value contracts with larger school districts.
- Grant a subset of Texas users beta access to early versions of the report
Assumptions and Risks
- Feasibility Assumptions
- Our legacy system lacked the performance capabilities to feasibly aggregate and provide the needed data.
- We lacked a proper authorization framework and would need something to differentiate between the various levels of users
- We assumed we could use Launch Darkly to control access for different users and display different versions of the report based on different authorization levels
- Desirability Assumptions
- We knew that standards-heavy states like Texas would greatly benefit from the value given by the reports, and assumed the same would be true for all states
- Viability Assumptions
- We assumed that aggregating a student's performance based on our current data would be accurate and not misleading
- We assumed it would be a large undertaking but with the added value of updating and creating new reports, we were excited to get it done.
- We assumed this would also set us apart from the competition because of our unique data on student proficiency.
- Usability Assumptions
- We assumed we could create an information architecture that would not only work for Texas and how they organize their standards so we wanted it to work for all states
- We assumed we could present our data in a way that spoke to the users about a student's proficiency with a standard and then successfully aggregate that information to the class level, the teacher level, the school level, and ultimately the district level.
“Matt always insisted on ensuring that we started with a thorough understanding of the problem. This brought clarity to design ideas, discussion and decisions. Also, Matt relentlessly pursued refinement of designs, pushing through complexities to find ways to give teachers both at-a-glance understanding and the possibility of diving deeper (and yet deeper!)” Josh Britton - CEO, Founder - Get More Math!
Testing High-Risk Assumptions
- Feasibility Testing
- Feasibility prototypes led by our system architect to identify technologies that would be performant enough for our needs and also work well within our current system
- We would build a new reporting service using Quarkus that would be performant enough to handle all of our use cases
- Desirability Research
- Competitive analysis and other market research done by the executive team, sales and marketing helped us to confirm that this would bring value to all states and not just Texas
- Viability Research
- I led multiple Design Studio workshops with the team to come up with a formula that could take our existing data and calculate an accurate proficiency score per standard, per student
- While testing feasibility we determined that the new reporting service can also be used to eventually retire a third-party service called Sisense we were using for reports and afford us the ability to make new reports and enhance the current ones
- Through research, we learned how teachers and admins are currently gathering data using some of our competitor's services
- Usability Testing
- Additional research was done to determine how Texas organizes its standards and how it compares to other states.
- Early usability testing with high-fidelity prototypes allowed us to iterate on how best to present the data to the users
Proposed Solutions
New database
Weighted Quadratic Mean formula for calculating proficiency
Comprehensive Navigation Scheme
Reports Search System
The Teacher Level Report
Single IA for Organizing Standards
Launch Darkly to Control Access
The District Level Report
The Class Level Report
Hierarchical Reporting Layout
The School Level Report
The Student Level Report
Results
Gathering results now…
“As a former veteran math teacher and former colleague of Matthew, I was privileged to collaborate and witness him develop Texas standards-based data reports from initial concept until ultimate product feature release for Get More Math. Matthew impressively (and patiently) sought users’ requests and constructive feedback throughout the entire reports’ development process in an effort to improve features and user experience as well as meet expectations. His expertise, knowledge, collaborative and communication skills were essential in targeted users (Texas educators) improving instruction and student achievement. Matthew is undoubtedly an asset to any organization’s team and product.” LeKesha Malveaux - Sales Account Manager, Get More Math