IBM X Avance
IBM Corporate Services Responsibility
Content management solutions to improve efficiency, relevance, and effectiveness of education content delivery
Define
Problem Statement
AVANCE is experiencing high demand for their Parent-Child Education Program (PCEP). The current PDF format of the curriculum content limits their capability to meet the rising demand. Our solution will aim to increase accessibility, accommodate individualization, and capture and disseminate real-time curriculum updates.
How can we ensure that our parent education program is kept up-to-date and the most up-to-date content is being effectively implemented in the Latinx communities?
Research
The Current State
The lesson materials for the Parent Education Program has not been updated for the past 30 years. The barriers are caused by how their curriculum content is being managed and distributed to their educators. From index cards, transparencies, it's only in the past year that the lesson materials were digitally distributed as PDFs.
Stakeholder Mapping
With our unique positioning to provide design consulting services directly to the external client under the IBM Corporate Services Responsibility unit, we kicked-off the project with the stakeholder map. We identified stakeholders within and external to IBM and identified relationships amongst them. We identified who to reach out to and engage with for our design research work.
This first version of the stakeholder map was created with the clients to help us understand Avance's organizational structures, their expectations, and relationships.
The map expanded over the weeks, as the team conducted further research to identify parallel IBM products and services and spoke to different people within IBM and Avance.
Internal Interviews & External Workshops
Using the stakeholder map, we identified internal stakeholders with expertise and prior research with digital learning such as P-TECH and Moodle. Also, we executed virtual and in-person design thinking workshops with Ellen and Paola to conduct empathy mapping and journey mapping sessions.
Empathy Mapping
We initially identified three users:
-
Ellen, the National Executive
-
Paola, the Parent Educator
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Peter, the Partner Organization
For the first iteration of our project, we decided to focus on Ellen and Paola's needs and pain points. We decided to address the organization's pain points with internal stakeholders first, before addressing the needs of its external stakeholders which is part of its future growth.
As-Is Scenario
Ideate
Big Ideas &
Prioritization Grid
Based on Paola and Ellen's needs and pain points, the design and product management team diverged and converged to create Big Idea Vignettes to rapidly brainstorm possible ideas. Then we grouped and prioritized them to take deeper dive into a few ideas that were most important and feasible.
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Generate!
- Quantity over quality -
Cluster!
- Converge and discuss -
Prioritize!
- Focus on importance & feasibility -
Storyboarding
To-Be Scenario
Based on the prioritized ideas, the team diverged to create to-be storyboards on how our solution can help address pain points and opportunities in Ellen and Paola's as-is story. Then we converged to recognize the similarities, pick out the best parts of each teammate's story and weave them into one refined master story.
Prototype
Information Architecture
Experience-based Roadmap
Proposed Solutions
Equipo is a web platform for managing and organizing curriculum contents in one place. It streamlines the distribution of updated educational content and creates a centralized content repository to enable single-source publishing of the material. It offers parents educators tools to easily add notes and comments, capturing changes being made and creating a platform of shared practice.
In respect to the organization's need for flexibility around execution timeline and budget, we presented several options along with the cost and time allocations for each as a next step.
Curriculum walkthrough
Content edit walkthrough
Translation
CEO,
AVANCE
The product far exceeded my expectations. I’m certain it will change the trajectory of our organization in major ways.
Director of Innovation & Strategy, AVANCE
You all did an awesome job listening to our users - thank you all for making a point to meet them where they were - language-wise, time-wise, method of interview.
The National Executive,
AVANCE
Thank you all for really taking the time to understand our needs. Thank you for connecting with those whose voice matters most in our organization. The product your team designed took an idea and turned it into a reality
What our clients are saying
Highlights
IBM Patterns Design Education Program
This project was unique from other IBM projects in two major ways.
The cross-disciplinary team of designers and product managers worked as part of the IBM Patterns Design Education Program. We worked in a high-pressure environment with a strict timeline of 5 weeks to deliver results to our clients. The team worked collaboratively with our client and end-users by adopting agile methodology.
Additionally, the project created the opportunity to work with a non-profit organization while leveraging the resources and expertise of the enterprise approach to solving business problems. The project added complexity of working with users with limited English proficiency. The users that I worked with for this project were drastically different from those that I had been typically working with within the POWER and Cognitive Systems business unit.
Check out my blog for more stories from the IBM Patterns program.
Co-designed with:
Chloe Chen, UX Designer
Jackson Glass, Visual Designer
Meng Chai, Content Designer
Brooke Jones, Associate Product Manager
Kelly Sun, Associate Product Manager
Takeaways
What have I learned from this experience?
1
How to overcome the challenges of designing with users with low language and technical literacy.
2
Leading a diverse team of designers and product managers through enterprise design thinking framework
3
Standup and retrospectives are essential in creating a healthy, collaborative, and high-functioning team dynamic.
What would I have done differently?
1
Organize regular and frequent interlock with external stakeholders from the very beginning.
2
Carefully plan the prototyping to incorporate user testing within the given 5 week project timeline.
3
Present UI design following Avance’s branding, along with the IBM Carbon Design System.