Thomas Piggott
User Experience Lead
Must research be so boring?
Not if I have anything to say about it! Relaunching Gale's elementary school product, Kids InfoBits, meant far more than a name change and streamlining into another product suite. Becoming In Context: Elementary, the project aimed to provide a renewed focus on our youngest learners, Kindergarteners through 5th graders. Their experience had to be tailored to their unique needs:
- Learning to read, not just reading to learn
- Visual learners, excited by movement and recognizable images
- Developing motor skills, meaning the mouse isn't always easy to use
The Old Experience: Out of Balance
We wanted to engage with students' natural curiousity and that meant making a browse path that encouraged exploration. Before we could do that, we had to identify problems with the browse path:
- Only a few images – often out of balance with the text around it
- Long lists of topics – small hit spots and not engaging (only teachers or librarians would find this useful and only then when looking to see topic coverage)
- Path gets lost – after a click or two down the path, it's hard to see the path taken
The New Experience: Harmonious use of Engaging Images and Text
Now take a look at the gallery below, the updated design. The following improvements to browse were made:
- Imagery and text pair better together – sizes are balanced and easier to click with a mouse or tap with a finger
- All topics get an image – students no longer have to rely soley on their reading comprehension skills to navigate and find interesting articles, images, or videos
- Animation is used to make images spin, wiggle, or grow to show not only what the user may select but add some fun
Ask me more!
That's a brief overview of just one aspect to this project. Here are some discussion topics I'd love to dive into deeper with you. Let's talk!
- Convincing the business to pay for and manage images for every topic
- Breaking the mold and diverting from the standard platform experience
- Usability Testing with younger students
Read About the Whole Project
In Context: Elementary
Rebooting a product to help K-5 students research and learn.