Amplify Desmos Math

Background

Amplify Desmos Math is a K-12 math program that combines problem-based learning with interactive digital tools to help students build deep conceptual understand. This unique platform blends engaging teacher-led lessons with student-led digital experiences. My main focus during the development of this product was on the Digital Flex Lessons (student-facing digital experience).

Our lesson development process followed an agile, cross-functional workflow that moved through various iterative phases. Areas where I was able to provide key design support were during early concepting, ideating, refining and building phases. I collaborated closely with curriculum specialists, product owners, and developers throughout each stage to create and refine the designs based on feedback, technical feasibility and student learning needs. This process helped us to rapidly test ideas, maintain consistency across experiences, and deliver polished, engaging digital lessons at scale.

My Role

I served as a lead designer for the K-5 digital experience:

Designed end-to-end interactions by translating lesson objectives, user needs and business goals into intuitive accessible experiences.
Collaborated directly with product, curriculum specialists, developers, researchers, and platform partners throughout all phases of work
Adapted designs to fit platform constraints
Applied and developed design system for a consistent student experience
Managed design handoff and collaboration in Figma

Concepting

content Mapping

During the first stage of lesson building, I closely partnered with curriculum specialists to look at the unit in focus and better understand the mathematical learning goals. I applied systems thinking to help align learning progressions across grade levels, which helped inform decisions around these lesson flows, scaffolding and possible interactions. Together, we chose a specific lessons within the unit that would benefit from a digital experience.

Key design contribution: Concepting phases were initially a product and content led stage of work. However, with no design oversight, we experienced roadblocks later down the road when it came time for building since the UX wasn’t considered early on. I found that joining early conversations helped streamline later stages and alleviated those building roadblocks.

Ideating

Finding a Problem-Based Approach

We moved into the ideation phase after a core mathematical concept was chosen. We began exploring lesson context and problem-based learning opportunities. I quickly translated these ideas into low-fidelity wireframes and interaction concepts, which helped the team visualize possibilities, align on a direction and make informed decisions. This rapid iteration approach allowed us to stay agile, reduce ambiguity and maintain tight production timelines.

Refining

Sweating the details

Once we settled on a lesson context, we moved into a refining stage where we decided on the specifics. This included the interaction flow, feedback iterations, end state of screens, and more. During this phase, we kept in mind the overall user experience, how to guide student to the final lesson goal, accessibility and user delight. If needed, I closely collaborated with our developers to ensure technical feasibility of more complex interaction.

Building

With the refined wireframes, I handed off the designs to our developers who began building the interaction in the graphing calculator and computational layer. ADM is a very unique product where all interactions are built directly in the Desmos Graphing Calculator. I kept close communications with our developers during this phase to ensure designs were built with consistent styling and met accessibility standards.

The last stage of the development process included QA and reviews. A group of stakeholders from various cross-functioning teams reviewed the lesson and provided final feedback. I also conducted one final design review of the lesson to ensure all accessibility standards were met, design consistency was applied and all outstanding concerns were addressed. I also monitored feedback that came in from cross-functioning partners to help prioritize, implement and backlog items.

Future Opportunities

Post-Launch

Once all K-5 digital lessons were completed, we entered into an agile revision phase. During this time, we collected data from our beta users and refined a handful of lessons based on this feedback.
Once we fully shipped the ADM product, we moved into a maintence phase. During this time, I began collecting and organizing user feedback. If any critical issues were recieved, we immediately addressed the issue. However, for other user experience related feedback, I began collecting and organizing these tickets into suite pitches. From there I collaborated with leadership and various cross-fucntionial teams to brainstorm solutions, mock up new iterations and determine the implications, lift and priority of these changes.

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