Enhancing learning experience with a child-friendly platform

Our client is a team of enthusiasts from Germany who recognize the importance of reading in today’s world. They were concerned that a significant number of teenagers in Germany had difficulty understanding simple texts, and set an ambitious goal to reduce this number. To achieve this, they came up with the idea of creating a learning platform that would assess and improve reading skills. The client’s in-house team created the first version. However, the user interface was not child-friendly, making navigation and engagement challenging for young learners. Therefore, it required enhancement to improve its design and functionality. The client approached EffectiveSoft for a UX audit to help rethink the design of the platform and make it more engaging and user-friendly for both mentors and learners.

Our creative designers conducted thorough research and analysis of the learning platform and presented a report with recommendations on design improvements. Based on the findings of the audit, the platform underwent a complete redesign entrusted to EffectiveSoft.

The successful collaboration with the client led to further improvements in cloud infrastructure, communication between platform components, and the processing and visualization of analytical data implemented by our engineers.

The result of the cooperation is an easy-to-understand learning platform that helps young users improve their reading skills. In addition, it allows mentors to easily monitor the speed and quality of the learners’ reading. To achieve this, our design and development teams tackled design, functionality, and user experience in the following ways:

Design

Our UX audit identified significant concerns with the previous platform:

• Interface unsuitable for children.
• Difficult navigation.
• Hard-to-find interface elements.
• Missing uniformity along with unused space.

Our designers undertook a redesign project aimed at making the platform more intuitive, user-friendly, and visually appealing. Here are some of the key steps we took to achieve our goals:

Research

We conducted extensive research on the age group that we were targeting, allowing us to tailor the platform’s design and aesthetic to suit their needs. Color palette: To make the platform more attractive to children, we chose a new color palette that included bright, friendly colors.

Font and wording

We changed the font and wording used on the platform to make it look more accessible and approachable to young learners.

Navigation

We made navigation more intuitive, removing hidden menus and buttons and ensuring that the primary navigation items were prominently displayed. Thanks to our team’s efforts, the platform now has a child-friendly interface that is both intuitive and engaging.

Development

We significantly improved the communication with the service that is responsible for processing the learner’s data. Existing API was not reliable, and it processed calls with insufficient speed. Therefore, it was important to have the API infrastructure in place that would correctly process requests and enable fast and reliable communication between the platform and the service. The new API infrastructure was designed to be lightweight and efficient, using best practices for optimization and minimizing unused code. Now it allows easy scaling and implementation of changes. Platform users can complete their tasks, do the tests and get assessment results fast and with no interruptions. Mentors can then upload new tasks and tests with no worries about delays.

Cloud Infrastructure

In order to help our client improve the performance and reliability of the platform,  we worked closely with them to migrate from their existing cloud provider to AWS. To ensure a smooth infrastructure migration, we implemented an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodology. This helped us to maintain consistency and repeatability, allowing us to easily replicate the infrastructure across other Amazon accounts. Our team took a Kubernetes approach in deploying the infrastructure. Throughout the migration process, we remained in constant communication with the client to ensure that any disruptions or downtime were minimized.

The migration not only improved performance and reliability, but also enabled the client to take advantage of the many benefits offered by AWS.

As part of the migration to AWS, we also implemented Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) processes to help our client streamline their software development and deployment workflows.

The new pipeline automatically builds, tests, and deploys code changes to the client’s AWS environment, reducing the amount of manual effort required to deploy new features and updates.

We continue to work closely with the client to optimize their cloud infrastructure and ensure that they are getting the most out of their investment.

Analytics

Based on the client’s requirement of monitoring the platform’s performance with data analytics and visualization capabilities, our team implemented a solution using Metabase as the primary analytics tool.

We worked closely with the client to identify key business metrics, data sources, and visualization needs that would deliver the insights needed to drive decision-making.

We created various visualization options, including graphs, charts, and tables, as well as custom dashboards to enable real-time analysis of key performance indicators of the platform.

Overall, implementing Metabase has allowed our client to gain a deeper understanding of their platform’s data, providing them with actionable insights to help them make informed decisions that lead to better outcomes.

The project was a resounding success, resulting in significantly improved functionality, aesthetics, and user experience. Learners now have a platform that is more engaging and suitable for their age group. The updated platform has also made it easier for mentors to track and monitor student progress. Overall, the project achieved its goal of enhancing the learning experience for young readers.