Helping Teachers Create Engaging
Teaching Content
Role
Product Design Intern
Product Thinking, Interaction Design
Timeline
August 2020 (3 weeks)
Team
1 Product Manager
1 Product Designer
As a Product Design Intern at an early-stage startup, I designed early concepts of multiple different features on Pencil. The largest project I worked on was creating an internal media system to help teachers on the platform save and create teaching content with engaging media files.
Context
About Pencil ✏️
Pencil is an online learning tool for educational institutions where teachers can create interactive teaching content stored in a library. Teaching content in this case refers to questions and notes.
Problem
Teachers are struggling to manage the files they use to create content
Teachers usually reuse content from previous teaching notes & exams and convert them into interactive content in Pencil. To create a better library of content for users, converting these materials will increase the number of content in Pencil and therefore enhance the resourcefulness of the application. As part of creating content; documents, images, and videos may be used to make the content more interactive and engaging.
Research
Why is it difficult for teachers to manage their files?
I didn't have access to talk to users at the time, so I collaborated closely with the product manager to understand the issues that come with creating questions and notes on Pencil. I was able to pinpoint several problems that exist with our current process.
Navigating between multiple file management is time consuming
Teachers are unable to share resources with others within the platform
Organizing materials across different courses is difficult
Overall, there wasn't a unified place to organize files. So…
Design Prompt
How might we help teachers manage the files used to create questions and notes on Pencil?
Competitive Analysis
Considering the variety of different digital content creation tool out there, I wanted to gain insight on how other tools incorporate the use of media as a part of their workflow.
Takeaways
Media files are usually easily accessible in the content creation flow
Files are organized in folders that users can create. Users can categorize their files to make it easier to find when needed.
Shared files from other users are also accessible in the content creation flow
Solution
Pencil's Internal Media System!
An internal media system designed to allow users to upload and organize their files within the Pencil ecosystem.
Final Designs
1/ Access and Manage Media Files
The media files will live in its own separate page accessible from the navigation bar called "Media". This global media storage system would include every media file that is uploaded for every course.
Media files can be accessed in the content creation flow through the tool bar in the text box, which eliminates the need for users to go outside of Pencil to use their files.
2/ Preview File
Teachers are able to add specific details regarding each media file, such as which courses it belongs to and what topics it covers. Teachers can also mark a document as a past exam paper and enter specific exam details. This makes it easier for users to sort and filter through their media files when they are creating content.
3/ Sharing Files
Collaboration between teachers happens often when teachers are preparing teaching materials. Therefore, media files that uploaded by a user would be accessible by other users in the same institution, with the exception of students.
Next Steps
Next steps in the process would to get the prototypes in the hands of teachers and to collect their feedback. Testing how long it takes for them to upload a file and use it, as well as recording how long it takes to retrieve a file that's been uploaded.
Note that I wasn't able to finish the project since this was towards the end of my internship. Currently the platform is undergoing major changes in the design system and this feature is currently being mapped onto the new design system.
Learnings
This was one of the biggest projects I've had to handle as a sole designer. I was able to learn a lot about building products at scale. I was also able to work closely with the product manager to plan out product requirements for this feature.
Creating such a large feature for a product also taught me how to follow a design system and pattern to make the visuals as uniform to the rest of the app as possible.