After a successful pilot led by a team of researchers, our client set out to scale a new physical education program to schools nationwide. The concept for MoveWise, a digital platform designed to help teachers integrate the program into their classrooms, was already in place.

With core features defined by stakeholders and executives, the primary need was to establish strong UX foundations and bring clarity to the product as it took shape. Working within a tight three-month timeline and a small team of two designers and one developer, we operated in a highly agile, fast-paced environment.

Features

Helping teachers learn, execute, and create.

MoveWise is a digital platform for teachers and administrators that provides the resources and guidance needed to implement and scale the initiative.

Bite-sized Lessons

Courses for teachers that introduce the iniative through digestible, short-form lessons.

Activity Search

A library of pre-made activities that teachers can browse, filter, and use in their classes.

AI-assisted Activity Creation

GenAI for students and teachers create their own activities.

Performance Evaluation

Dashboard that gives administrators an overview of the progress being made.

My impact

Aligning the product to teachers and their everyday contexts.

While stakeholders have an established vision for the platform’s features and capabilities, this is only half the battle. Bringing it to life in a way that supports teachers’ real-world contexts and needs is the other challenge.

I address these gaps by defining the UX strategy, then carrying it through with a design system and key interface designs that establish a trustworthy, supportive experience for teachers and administrators using the platform.

UX Strategy: Increasing engagement and program adoption by designing for low digital literacy and competing priorities.

Design System: A scalable, reusable system that supports the UX strategy through its approachable and energetic visual design.

User Interface: Designing core flows using the UX strategy.

Insights

Recognizing digital literacy and competing priorities.

To create an informed UX strategy and accelerate our work, I spoke with key stakeholders about past technology projects and where they fell short. From these conversations, along with my own experience with teachers, I identified two key considerations the product needed to account for:

Low digital literacy

The teacher demographic ranges in background, age, and experience. We should design with the goal of accommodating even those with low digital literacy.

Competing priorities

Teachers are already stretched thin with packed schedules. We need to account for the fact that the platform will not rank high among their priorities.

UX strategy

Creating alignment and momentum through a clear strategy and goal

To help align all team members and provide a framework for making independent decisions that speed up the workflow, I outlined a UX strategy built from the gathered insights.

UX strategy statement

If we deliver an approachable and energizing experience, then teachers will engage more deeply and consistently with the program, thus increasing daily movement of the students.

Design system

Playful, approachable, and energetic.

We crafted a design system that helped the user experience feel approachable, energizing, and fun.

A bright and energetic color palette
Nunito sans typeface: a highly legible and modern neo-grotesque typeface with approachable, humanist qualities
Rounded corners and soft elevations
Modular components for easy content addition

Product overview

Helping teachers learn, execute, and create.

MoveWise is a digital platform for teachers and administrators giving them the resources and knowledge to implement and scale the initiative.

Bite-sized Lessons

Courses for the teachers that taught them about the initiative through digestible, short-form lessons.

Activity Search

A library of pre-made activities for teachers to browse, filter, and use for their classes.

AI-assisted Activity Creation

GenAI to help students and teachers create their own activities.

Performance Evaluation

A dashboard of information that helps administrators track the progress of the iniative.

Design system

Playful, approachable, and energetic.

We crafted a design system that helped the user experience feel approachable, energizing, and fun.

A bright and energetic color palette
Nunito sans typeface: a highly legible and modern neo-grotesque typeface with approachable, humanist qualities
Rounded corners and soft elevations
Modular components for easy content addition

Design decisions

Making features more meaningful for teachers.

Our UX strategy, principles, and design system guide key design decisions that turn product capabilities into features tailored to our audience and their needs.

Here are some key design decisions that demonstrate this:

Feel in control of your progress

We compress lessons to under five minutes and make user progress visible, giving teachers a sense of control and forward momentum.

Simple filters

We reduce cognitive load by using a few easy-to-scan categories instead of filters. We also surface key information that affects teacher decision-making, such as activity duration and peer ratings.

Progress tracker

To encourage survey participation, we tracked user's survey progress.

Results

A 35% increase in average daily student activity.

After helping develop the UX strategy, design system, and interface, we built the entire platform in under six months.

After rollout, schools using the platform saw a 35 percent increase in average student activity, surpassing the WHO’s daily recommendation of 60 minutes. The platform scaled the program efficiently and re-energized teachers and students alike, making movement an everyday norm.

Here are a couple of lessons learned through this experience:

Reflection #1

A good UX strategy helps every role on the team - not just designers.

After initially outlining the UX strategy for the design team, I found it became far more valuable once shared across all roles. It gave everyone a shared lens that made decision-making faster and clearer. However, balance is critical. Strategies that are too specific are hard for non-design roles to grasp, while strategies that are too broad fail to empower independent decision-making and slow development.

Reflection #2

Capabilities are not features.

Capabilities describe what the product can do. Features define how those capabilities are shaped to deliver value to the audience.

My impact

Aligning the product to teachers and their everyday contexts.

While stakeholders had an already established vision for the platform's features and capabilities, this was only half the battle. Bringing it to life in a way that supported teachers' real-world contexts and needs is another challenge.

I filled these gaps by quickly defining the UX strategy that followed through with a design system and key interface designs to define a trustworthy and supportive experience for teachers and administrators using the platform.

UX Strategy

Increasing engagement and application of the program by designing for low digital literacy and competing priorities.

Design System

A scalable and reusable system that supported the UX strategy by it's approachability and positive spirit.

User Interface

Designing core flows that align with the UX strategy.