STEM Sims Lesson Search

Due to a non-disclosure agreement, information on this project is limited.

Project Details

Timeline: Dec 2020 - Feb 2021

Project Type: Work Project

Role: UI/UX Designer

Tools/Software Used:

• Figma

• Adobe Photoshop

• Adobe Illustrator

• Microsoft Powerpoint and Word

Goal:

Design a new more innovative search function for users of the site to more quickly find simulations.

STEM SIMS PROJECT OVERVIEW

Project Summary

The Challenge:

Needed to overhaul the current search functionality to make lessons more easily accessible and intuitive to find. The final concept resulted in a new search layout with a left-sided filter layout.

User Needs:

• Quickly find lessons and assign them to their class

• Ability to narrow down lesson options to more easily find assignments

• Keep search by keyword, grade, textbook, subject, and standard involved in search

Business Requirements:

• Should speed up lesson search and make the product more enticing for admin wanting to incorporate STEM Sims into their school system or district

• Should be easy to update/add lessons quickly to the lesson database

• Keep state-specific standards, and current textbooks used by involved school districts available within the search function

• Grade and Subject must be selected first (a requirement by primary lesson coordinator)

Pain Points:

• Too time-consuming

• Too many places available for searching for lessons/simulations (confusing to users)

• Many users don’t know the several search options available currently since they’re scattered across the site.

Technical Constraints:

• Lesson search hierarchy needs to match how the database is structured

• Grade and subject required before the primary search begins

• Need to prevent users from selecting options not available after grade and subject are selected

• Needs to be optimized so searching is quick to accomplish

• Keep it scalable with the idea that several new textbooks, standards, and subjects may be added to the current available options

  • Search options need to be shown in a clean way that doesn’t crowd the page with potential search filter selections, and the number of lessons needs to be limited per page (pagination?)

• The ability to search without using all 5 search criteria, should show lessons with only grade and subject selected (based on stakeholder choice)

KPI's to Keep in Mind:

• An uptick in site usage and retention

• Increase in the methods of searching for lessons (shouldn’t just be a keyword or category selection from other pages, should also include simultaneous searches from a keyword, grade, subject, standard, and textbook from lesson search all at once.

Needed to overhaul the current search functionality to make lessons more easily accessible and intuitive to find. The final concept resulted in a new search layout with a left-sided filter layout that allows you to search by grade, subject, textbook, standards, and keyword. This simple addition of the filter system improves the rate with which people can find a specific lesson by utilizing the filters to narrow the options rather than having the user click on individual topic icons and guess if their lesson is present within a certain category.

Target User

1. Teacher/Admin using lesson search to find a lesson

   • Quickly find lessons and assign them to their class

   • Ability to narrow down lesson options to more easily find assignments

   • Keep search by keyword, grade, textbook, subject, and standard involved in search
     

Solution

A competitive analysis was completed to look at other lesson searches to see what was successful. After a thorough search, we noted that their searches were all centralized to one page, not spread out across multiple. Some even had the search available from the navigation bar that when used would take you to their lesson search page to continue searching.

After several iterations, looking into how to best layout the lesson search to account for all 5 search criteria, the final design prioritized filter options to the left-hand side and search results on the right. No search bar was included in this iteration of production until the dashboard could be completed. The lesson search was updated and brought into one page making it much easier to navigate to find specific lessons.

It was also designed to be scalable for the future should the company decide to add more lessons or filter options. Overall the primary improvement from the initial version is a more intuitive option to keep up with current business standards and competitors.

STEM SIMS FINAL OUTCOMES

Results

Project Success Metrics

• It has been incorporated into a portion of the dashboard, and so far teachers with access have been finding more ease in searching for lessons to assign to their students.

• 173% increase in the number of users going to new lesson search since having pushed to production

Reflections

• While used with dashboard, the lesson search can more easily allow teachers and admins to find the lessons they would like to assign to their classes. The lesson search could still benefit from not requiring the grade and subject in order to search, however, since that was a decision from the training coordinator (preference) we would need to convince them of the benefits of allowing more options to show up in the beginning.

Next Steps

• The next step would be to remove the other search pages to limit confusion on the users end, however this will need approval from the lesson coordinator to make sure nothing is lost in removing those pages to create the one search page.