Autonomous Homeschooling

UI, UX

Project made in DESEM Desarrollo de Emprendedores, A. C. Mexico

Design Team
José Arturo Dávalos
Laura Jeanette Castillo
Mariana Macías

The main purpose of Autonomous is to give parents certainty about the level of knowledge their children have, supporting them with a diagnostic test, organization tools for subjects, educational references and community events for the homeschooler community.
They found that just like in the United States, in Mexico there are parents educating their children from home.

This project is envisioned to have a growth in the future, and to support parent homeschoolers across the country.

Research

The main research tool to use was the focus group. We made the invitation to many of the parents interested in the project, and they talked, letting us know the concerns, difficulties and benefits of educating their kids at home.
The main questions asked as researchers were:

1. 1. Why teaching your kids at home?
2. 2. Which are the motivators to keep the homeschooling method?
3. 3. Which are the difficulties?

Competition Comparison

Home-based education isn't a regular thing in Mexico, so it was kind of troublesome finding competition for a national comparison. Some of the most similar sites, would be more like a blog, or offer a set package of resources for a determined age range, limiting it to 5 or 6 years old as the most grown kids.

The next steps would be finding any global sites with this same purpose, and compare the content and features of each one of them, and match it with the needs expressed by the parents at the focus group.

Branding

The branding would be an important element for the project, as it should work for the kids, but also with the parents, because they would be the main user. Setting a color palette would five the freedom to make various combinations for the elements of the site.

Inspired in Gio Ponti's mosaics, to create a set of shapes interacting with each other

Setting goals

Setting the goals for the project would based on the needs of our user would ease the process of making decisions for the site content.

Trustworthy educational content for parents

The content for the page would be provided with a strategic alliance with a private elementary and junior high school, were the teachers would write the material, orientated and adapted to a home-based education.

Organization tools

The advantages of homeschooling are the disposition of time that the parents have, and that they have the freedom to select their schedules for each assignment; but was also a worry, since they sometimes have to keep track of the education, of three kids with different ages.
This would get into 2 main features:

1. 1. Creation of individual profiles for each of the kids
2. 2. Selection of how many assignments you want to keep in a specific period of time

Knowledge diagnosis

The platform would offer a diagnosis test, doing this will set the list of assignments suitable for the age and current knowledge of the kid.

Group activities

Home-based education can have it's limitations on infrastructure, and equipment with science and sports activities. Having an alliance with a school gave us the possibility of considering having live activities, promoted through the site.

Wireframing

Screens

Integrating the branding, wireframes and user flows.