ZILLSKILL
A learning community for kids
OVERVIEW
ZILLSKILL is a platform that provides a learning community for kids to bring out the best in them and explore their inner passion. They can engage in interactive activities with learning opportunities while interacting with their peers. We were responsible for delivering an enriching and engaging experience that allow kids to do stuff they are deeply passionate about, whether it’s building a game on Roblox or becoming a YouTuber.
In the case study I will showcase how I built a unique journey to help kids discover their inner curiosities and natural capabilities through design. I collaborated closely with the founding team and a child psychiatrist who helped me empathize and understand kids’ mental models and how their cognitive abilities and evolve over time.
ROLE
UX Designer
COLLABORATORS
Bikash Prajapat, Business Analyst
Saiaditya Garyali, Designer
ZILLSKILL founding team
Dr. Shafali Batra, Child Psychiatrist
TIMELINE
Feb 2021 (2 weeks)
PROBLEM
Kids want to learn. Differently.
In a typical school, all kids are expected to be good at the same thing at the same time. However in real world, to fulfill our inner passion to learn and explore new frontiers, we join groups in which we play unique roles backed by our individual strengths. We collaborate with others to leverage their strengths for mutual benefit instead of competing against each other. This has a multiplier effect in each of us and helps everyone grow and excel in what they are passionate about.
We discovered that a lot of kids are keen to explore things that can’t necessarily be taught in a classroom environment. This was especially true for Indian kids who feel castigated for doing something that is termed as unconventional. My challenge was to help incorporate this feedback in ZILLSKILL and build functionalities that:
1.
Helps kids understand that their distinctive interests are what makes them so unique and make them become fearless about learning.
2.
Help incorporate a user experience strategy to build a recommendation system to better curate courses and content.
IDEATION
Choosing what is right
Designing for kids poses it own challenges and opportunities. A common statement made when building for kids is - “We don’t know what kids like, want, expect or think and their thoughts are very transient”. To help answer some of these questions, we spent time working with the child psychiatrist who helped us appreciate childrens’ perspective and behaviors. It was almost like becoming a child again, for our team! These were insights we gathered:
Once we collected all important data points, our next plan of action was to synthesize on the basis of feasibility and impact, and turn them into 3 core action items to design for.
1.
Kids need instant gratification: While adult users can wait for things to happen, children need instant actions and reactions and preferably, in a gamified form from the first instance of the interaction with the interface.
2.
Storytelling helps kids understand: Help kids stitch together the experience which will then unfold the plot and assimilate to their individual behavior patterns.
3.
Kids act emotionally, not rationally: Responsively build a UX that considers kids brutal honesty and emotional responses.
The recommendation system
As pointed out earlier, there were two requirements that design had to solve for: Help kids unlock their true potential and build a recommendation system. The engineering teams only had enough bandwidth to create a basic recommendation system. So, we decided that when a user creates a new ZILLSKILL profile, we will lead them through a carefully crafted assessment program that he called ZAP (ZILLSKILL Assessment Program) with questions tailored for each age group.
Finding feature spaces
Now that we had a solution in hand for the recommendation system, my next design opportunity was to build an engaging experience to help deliver the assessment results.
With the action items defined earlier acting as guard rails, I started brainstorming to come up with an idea universe where the number of ideas mattered and not the quality of the idea. Following this, I began to connect the ones that would be most impactful and practical. The idea universe helped me narrow down engaging experience items based on prioritization criteria.
After laying out a bunch of ideas, I began to iterate with some quick and dirty sketches, just a way to put down my thoughts in a more visual form.
Building for emotions
A key realization after some exploration was the importance of the format of presentation and UI details to deliver the assessment results in a fun, friendly and non-intimidating way. So, we decided to take the following design directions:
An ephemeral format
Kids have much shorter attention span than adults, and hence, I designed a unique experience to show the results in short and sweet fleeting moments to retain kids’ interest. Test results are always intimidating. By allowing kids to indulge in engaging content in a unique format will help divert from feelings of intimidation to feelings of excitement.
Bold graphics with vibrant colors
From stars to black holes, exploring the solar system to imagining they are astronauts, kids develop a special curiosity for space exploration. So we designed fun and exciting illustrations of spaceships, planets and stars. Kids also generally have a high tolerance for broader colour palettes so we used bright and vibrant colours bringing energy into the designs.
Positive reinforcements
Strong emotions are the foundations of our memory. Using powerful vocabulary to describe the personality of the kids helps keep them motivated and instills a sense of happiness and pride.
Inspiring role model
As kids we learn a lot through modelling. Role models help shape how they behave in school, relationships, or when making difficult decisions. So we introduced and matched well-known and accomplished personalities to reinforce their skill.
Sharing
In the world of social media, allowing kids to share their ZAP badges was both a clever user growth tactic and a way for the kids to trumpet their skills!
Outcomes I helped drive
01
Provided tangible and result oriented assessment for kids
02
Enabled a visually vibrant experience for kids to discover inner passions
03
Enhanced user engagement avenues by studying kids psychology