HHMI BioInteractive Online Community for Educators

Project Type

New Community Design

My Role

UX & UI Lead

Technology

Drupal

Tools

Figma

Team Credits

  • User Experience & Visual Designer: Maddie Purcell

  • Solutions Architect: Ben Crawford

  • Digital Strategist: Hannah Webster

  • Tech Lead: Matt West

  • Back-End Dev: Norman Bucknor, Patrick Hangauer

  • Front-End Devs: Tommy Alter, Alycia Cahill, Sirod Johnson

  • Quality Assurance: Corinne Serfass, Cassandra Beaulaurier

  • Account Manager: Patti Barlow

  • Project Managers: Charlotte Sisk, James Wang

Date launched: June 2022

The Client

HHMI BioInteractive provides free resources and teaching support to tens of thousands of life science teachers at the high school and undergraduate level. Their "resources are designed to connect students to big ideas in biology, promote engagement with science practices, and instill awe and wonder about the living world." BioInteractive is a part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education.

BioInteractive also has a group of Ambassadors who work very closely with them from both an advisory and professional development capacity.

Target Users

High School and College Life Science Educators

Client’s Goal

Develop a unique, robust, active, and growing online professional community that becomes the primary, centralized destination for life science teachers to network with and learn from one another and to access teaching resources and professional development opportunities.

Project Goals

  • Facilitate community, networking and knowledge-sharing

  • Add value to BioInteractive’s professional development programs

  • Broaden access to Ambassador and BioInteractive expertise

Challenges

This project was my first time designing an online community.

Key Takeaways

During this project, I grew in my understanding accessibility. I also realized I enjoy designing for complex interactions.

The Process

Discover

Discovered client goals, user needs, and industry best practices. Planned product requirements, governance and moderation requirements, and how we would measure success.

Design

Designed prototypes for key features, incorporating feedback from the client, users, development coworkers, and accessibility partners.

Build

Planned acceptance criteria, built features, and tested with real content.

Launch to Ambassadors

Launched the first set of features to BioInteractive Ambassadors and fixed bugs.

Discover

Discovery Workshop with Stakeholders

We ran a workshop with the HHMI BioInteractive team to identify goals and key features for the new community. We had participants do a “BioInteractive in the News” activity in which they wrote the highlights for a news article about the new online community, after it launches. We also had them write jobs to be done statements, in which they filled in the following: “As a                    , when I go to BioInteractive, I want to                                               so I can                             .” Lastly, we looked at features that other online communities and professional development platforms had and asked participants to vote on them.

4 Surveys of Science Educators

We surveyed the following groups to get a better understanding of how science educators use online communities: English-speaking Ambassadors, Spanish-speaking Ambassadors, English-speaking field testers, and the Spanish-speaking newsletter list. The Spanish-speaking audiences were given the survey in Spanish.

I do not speak Spanish, but was able to analyze all the surveys in collaboration with coworkers.

Researching Comparator Sites

To get a sense of the features and functionality that users may be used to from other experiences in the landscape, we looked at a number of sites, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.

We also looked at professional development course sites, such as Skillshare, Coursera, YouTube, Leaders of Awesomeness, etc.

Measurement Planning Workshop

This workshop, led by our analytics team, helped us identify how we would measure success.

Governance & Moderation Planning Sessions

These sessions allowed us to carefully consider the needs and requirements for creating a well-moderated platform.

Research Takeaways

  • Educators want a community where they can share resources and ideas, build connections, and collaborate.

  • Educators have limited time. They need a community that is searchable, easy to navigate, and organized.

  • Educators want a well-moderated community with clear norms.

  • Educators want information that is accurate, relevant, and scientifically-sound. They want resources and strategies that have proven to be effective with students.

  • There are currently many online spaces for educators, including Facebook and other platforms. Creating a new successful and engaged online community will take time, effort, resources, and dedication.

  • HHMI BioInteractive is uniquely positioned for success.

    • BioInteractive is well-connected

    • BioInteractive has a very engaged group of ambassadors

    • BioInteractive has >2,500 educators registered on BioInteractive.org

    • BioInteractive is a trusted and reliable source

  • The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically moved interactions into an online setting. Though this likely had some impact on survey respondents’ answers and expectations, online community, connection and information sharing is critical for educators.

  • The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on digital communication, communities, and events has also made it clear that online communities provide accessibility, inclusivity, and equity in a way in-person events often cannot.

Design

During the design phase, I rapidly created mockups of the key pages and features for the new community. I gathered feedback from my coworkers, the client, Ambassadors (our users), and BioInteractive’s accessibility consultant, Deque. We went through many different iterations as we further defined requirements for the features.

Personalized User Dashboard and Profile

Designing a Workflow for Educators to Request a New Group

Designing Community Groups with Announcements, Discussion Threads, and Group-Specific Events

Designing a Workflow for Educators to Add a New Resource

Community Moderation

Community Stats Dashboard

Build

While the developers built out the designs, I did design QA on their work and hopped in to answer any questions around intent of the designs.

Launch to Ambassadors

For our first launch of the online community, we opened up the ability for BioInteractive staff and Ambassadors to join groups and interact with each other on the platform. We later added the ability to allow them to add their own resources to the site and to send direct messages to other users.

The site will be opened up to the public, but has not been released yet. We will be requiring users to be become verified as educators before they can join the community.