Starfall Education Foundation
CONTEXT
Starfall is a free website that helps children learn to read through games. They have expanded content to songs, books, math, and more, covering standards from Pre-K to 5th grade. Starfall’s mission is to create free and low-cost experiences where children have fun learning in an environment of positive reinforcement.
ROLE
UX Designer,
Synthesis Lead
DURATION
January 2025 - May 2025
(10 weeks)
TEAM
Ice Kulruchakorn
Vivian Lau
Adriana Alcasabas
TOOLS
Figma
PROBLEM SPACE
Starfall releases new content roughly 2 times a year.
Feedback from stakeholders is crucial to their development process. However, there is currently no formal process.
CURRENTLY, SURVEYS ARE TAKEN INDIVIDUALLY ON QUALTRICS.
WE FRAMED OUR HOW MIGHT WE STATEMENT
How might we design an efficient playtesting system to ensure insightful responses for Starfall’s developers, while being engaging to teachers, parents, and students?
WE IDENTIFIED THREE RESEARCH GOALS:
Retention
Value proposition
Participant management
User Experience
Recruitment
Branding & messaging
Recruitment webpage wireframe
Participant touchpoints
Participation
Best practices
Content review design
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Analyzed best practices to understand a unique space
In our secondary research, our team analyzed existing industry standard for both educational content and game playtesting, as Starfall is the integrates the best of both worlds.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
Developing an end-to-end recruitment to retention strategy.
We identified key metrics and measures in which we could build a program that keeps members active and incentivized to keep reviewing our content.
USER INTERVIEWS
Speaking with unique stakeholders in Starfall's product.
We conducted 15 user interviews with Starfall developers, parents, and teachers to identify their unique pain points during the process.
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
Following typical user's interaction within the existing process.
We also conducted
EXPERT INTERVIEW
Quantify a child's cognitive ability in the context of playtesting.
Given our time constraints and limitations around privacy and interviewing children, we decided to conduct an expert interview to understand elements we should prioritize when designing for children.
AFFINITY MAPPING OUR RESEARCH FINDINGS
From our synthesis, we drew these three main insights:
Children respond best to emotion-based prompts with visual aids rather than abstract evaluation.
Teachers need short, effective surveys in order to keep students engaged while facilitating surveys in a large-group or classroom setting.
Developers need data that is directly to the point and easily digestible for clear direction moving forwards.
CRAZY 8 IDEATION
Brainstorming according to product goals
We organized groups based on our initial research goals, streamlining what information would be most useful in our written deliverables.
LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
OUR SOLUTION
Playtester Program Landing Page
We created a landing page to expand the outreach of Starfall’s playtesting program to existing Starfall users. It provides a comprehensive overview of the program to inform users and to encourage them to join.
Visual Question Guide
Based off of our insights, we designed an example of how Starfall might integrate visuals and their own unique brand into a playtesting survey.
Product Recommendations
Using our insights, we created a flow of touchpoints that would lead to a user joining Starfall's playtesting program. To streamline the feedback process, our team created guidelines for writing survey questions for children, examples of questions, and interactive and engaging visual mockups.
User Flow Diagram
This diagram allows stakeholders to identify how Starfall users would interact with our product recommendations at-a-glance. It includes different entry points, as well as how users are redirected to different pages or products.
Comprehensive UX Report
We provided our client with a written report highlighting our key insights from our research, including detailed user personas and journey maps that reflected the goals, wants, and pain points each Starfall stakeholder.
TEAM STARFALL!
