At a Glance
The Challenge: Evolve the existing mCLASS platform to simplify the highly esoteric nature of literacy education, reduce administrative effort needed to assess students, and shift Amplify's product team from data-focused solutions to a more user-centered approach.
The Solution: A redesigned educator-focused literacy assistant that delivers timely, contextually relevant data through an intuitive classroom activity hub, replacing the complex data-driven interface with user-centered design patterns that align with natural teaching behaviors.
The Problem
My Role
Lead Product Designer during 5-month engagement:
Conducted comprehensive user research with educators in classroom settings.
Developed experience maps and user personas that guided all design decisions.
Created design concepts, UI design system, and interactive prototypes.
Led user testing sessions to validate design approaches.
Collaborated with director of product management, 3 senior product managers, and UX designer.
Key Responsibility: Shifting organizational culture from data-focused to user-centered design approach.
Research & Discovery
Our discovery phase employed multiple research methodologies to understand real classroom dynamics:
Heuristic Analysis
Comprehensive evaluation of the existing desktop application identified usability barriers and interaction pain points.
School visits
Direct observation of educators administering assessments and analyzing data revealed the gap between system design and actual teaching workflows.
User Persona Development
Created preliminary personas based on observed teacher behaviors and experience levels, establishing clear design targets.
Strategic Approach
After the discovery phase, I created a framework that highlighted key shifts in perspective we needed to make to better align the product with teachers’ needs:
From Data-Driven to User-Centered: Previous design efforts had been dictated by data availability rather than context or use. We needed purposeful designs that aligned with existing classroom behaviors.
From Self-Guided to User-Assisted: Users of all experience levels struggled due to over-reliance on acronyms and unclear actions. Platform effectiveness needed to be immediate, not learned over time.
From Hidden Tools to Intuitive Functions: Many educators undervalued mCLASS because they were unaware of its full capabilities. We needed to surface functionality and demonstrate value.
From False Affordances to Explicit Affordances: Unpredictable, inconsistent actions created frustration. Predictable functionality would allow teachers to focus on analysis rather than navigation.
Key Innovations
The Classroom Activity Hub
I created a teacher-focused entry point that spotlights recent and future actions, enabling immediate orientation and planning. This became the foundation for contextual, timely data delivery throughout the academic year.
Task-Oriented Design Approach
I shifted the from current feature-based approach to a workflow-based design, with omnipresent notifications and contextual guidance supporting teachers' natural work patterns.
An alert system was created that surfaces upcoming tasks as well as previous actions.
Contextual Data Delivery
I redesigned the data highlight panels and improved table filters so that educators could isolate student groups by risk level, progress status, and assessed skills (matching how teachers actually think about their classrooms).
The primary goal of the mClass system is to pinpoint where students need additional support. The new sorting feature enables teachers to group students for the first time based on shared instructional needs.
Assessment Module Template
Enabled teachers to review test responses during classroom or student analysis without losing context or switching between screens.
Assessment results are now available from the classroom view.
Project Deep Dive
Results and Impact
Key Learnings
Discovery Depth Matters
Although the timeline was tight, a deeper discovery phase would have uncovered critical needs earlier. Expert users highlighted late-stage requirements for data consolidation, underscoring the value of comprehensive user research across experience levels.
Timing Constraints Impact Innovation
Several solutions preferred by test groups couldn't be implemented in the first phase due to engineering and sales constraints. This reinforced the need for early cross-functional alignment on user needs vs. technical feasibility.
Future Opportunities
Integrated Note-Taking: Teachers universally kept manual notes for each student that weren't carried over between grades/schools - a major opportunity for platform continuity.
Guided Onboarding: First-time user experience to support the coaching culture discovered in research.
Celebration Moments: Simple screens to share student progress and remind teachers to provide positive reinforcement.