Supporting English as a Second Language

 
 
 
 

Overview

A redesign of an educational resource in to support Alberta teachers with students who have English as their second language. This resource holds many complex learning resources for teachers and parents. The goal here was to ensure the content was easy to find using intuitive language.

 
 
 

Design process

Problem

Through our online feedback we were hearing from users unable to find the information they were looking for and the frustration that followed.
Knowing that the information was on the site, we began with navigation and workflow.

 

Defining Target Users

  • Teachers who have taught in the classroom for more than four years

  • New teachers who have less than 4 years of classroom teaching experience

  • Administrators/Leaders

 
 

Ideation

Using Design Thinking I approached the existing site and applied a heuristic review. Following this I used Treejack remote testing on the existing site with teachers in the province and I was able to validate pain points with quantitative data.

With the results in-hand I invited the subject matter expert/client into an ideation session to examine the outcomes and come up with new ideas. While focusing on the users, we created journey maps and and possible workflows.

I worked with subject matter experts to confirm terminology and the necessary content needed.

 

Original and current site design

 
 
 

Research & testing

 

User Characteristics

  • Mix of people who are comfortable with computers/technology and ones who are not

  • Mix of people who teach different divisions (eg. K-3 teacher, a 4-6 teacher, a 7-9 teacher, a 10-12 teacher)

  • Mix of people who are school-based and central office-based

 
 
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Areas in scope of the usability evaluation

 

  • Supporting English as a Second Language home page

  • Finding student examples of writing

  • Understanding of benchmarks

  • Exploring details about English as a Second Language proficiency levels

  • Print function

  • Discovering an English Language Proficiency evaluation

 

UX methodologies used

 

  1. Heuristic Evaluation

  2. Remote Usability Testing

  3. Prototype Testing

 
 
 

Next steps

 

Due to timing and capacity, this project did not get completed.