TeeRead
A tool for teachers to track their students’ reading level with AI.
Branding + Illustration + UI/UX Design
TeeRead’s CEO had one goal only: to make the reading crisis a problem of the past. Together we designed an app for teachers to assess their student’s reading level, something that has never been done before.
The Problem
+60% of students in the US don’t read proficiently.
Teachers simply don’t have enough time to track all of their students’ reading skills frequently enough to make sure they don’t fall behind.
The Solution
An app for students to practice reading with content tailored to their needs, and take literacy assessments that generate weekly skill reports.
+ An app for teachers where they can access their students’ reports, closely follow their evolution and needs, and assign reading assessments when necessary.
Discover
To really understand the issue to solve and be able, I first had to become an expert on the topic of teaching how to read. I went through countless books on methods for teaching kids how to read — often times the exact same material teachers themselves use to learn the topic.
Since the product was worked on remotely, I couldn’t exactly shadow users through the process of teaching, so I found the next best thing: YouTube videos! There was a surprising amount of material on YouTube that I analyzed to get a sense of what a reading assessment looks like, and what the pain points and struggles are for both teachers and students.
I also got the chance to actually meet with teachers and experts in the field via video conferences. This allowed me to get the teacher’s point of view, and to gather useful insights to use in the definition phase.
Surveys were also a very powerful tool to quickly gather qualitative data that helped me better understand the demographic attributes of our users, and to validate some assumptions that were made at the begining of the project.
Define
With all the insights that I collected, I realized that even if teachers were our main users, they weren’t our only users — students needed to be taken into account too.
With this in mind I created user personas for both teachers and students, that were later validated with the founding team and project stakeholders in a workshop.
Design
Having a clear picture of what our problem was, and who our users where, I started working on designing the product.
In this stage I worked very closely with the founder to make sure her vision for the product was respected. We engaged in various brainstorming sessions to settle on product features and scope, which I then translated into wireframes.
Each user flow was also mapped out while designing the app screens.
Prototype & Test
The first prototyping instance was carried out to test the product’s MVP with real teachers. For this, I created an interactive Figma prototype, taking advantage of it’s advanced prototyping features.
When tested with teachers it was a huge success. They loved everything about it — from the idea all the way to the implementation. Some were already asking where they could download the app!
92.5%
Task success rate on login and class setup flow78%
Task success rate on student report flow
Brand Design
The stakeholders wanted a brand style that was playful, to be able to relate to kids, but could be used in a professional setting as well.
To follow on their requirements, I developed a bright color palette, and chose green as the brand’s primary color to represent the growth that this product can bring to the classroom.
Character Design - Tori the Koala
Logo Explorations
