UnlockEd

CLIENT WORK • FALL 2023

UnlockEd

WIDENING ACCESS TO EDUCATION FOR INCARCERATED LEARNERS

TIMELINE

4 months

ROLE

Senior Designer

SKILLS

User Research
Wireframing
Mockups
Usability Testing
Prototyping

TOOLS

Figma

OVERVIEW

As a senior designer, I worked with a product manager to lead a team of three UX designers in designing an education portal for UnlockEd as part of Harvard’s Tech for Social Good. Developed and tested by a team of current and formerly incarcerated individuals, UnlockEd is an all-in-one education access and management platform for prisons that can be run with or without the internet. UnlockEd can enable incarcerated learners to earn certifications and degrees, while providing correctional administrators and researchers with a rich set of data around program effectiveness.

THE PROBLEM

UnlockEd is moving away from building an LMS and looking to aggregate courses and content. In order to enable that, UnlockEd is seeking to build a well-structured portal that allows students to access their courses and learning content, manage course registration, and view their records of achievement.

HOW MIGHT WE DESIGN AN INTUITIVE AND ENGAGING EDUCATION PORTAL THAT ALLOWS USERS TO EASILY ACCESS CONTENT, MANAGE ENROLLMENT, AND VIEW RECORDS OF ACHIEVEMENT?

THE PROCESS

We followed a research-driven, iterative process to ensure that we designed the right solution for incarcerated learners' needs. This process involved comprehensive user research, wireframing, mockups, usability tests, and prototyping.

RESEARCH

Competitor Research

We looked into Coursera, Khan Academy, edX, LinkedIn Learning, and Prison Scholar Fund to gain insights into current education platforms available and to analyze their strengths and weaknesses.

Understanding the Problem Space

To gain a deeper understanding of the existing prison education systems, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of various sources, including scholarly articles, journals, news reports, and personal narratives.

User Interviews

We conducted 2 user interviews with employees at UnlockEd — one who was formerly incarcerated and one who is currently incarcerated in order to better understand our end users and their behaviors and goals.

WHAT IS YOUR CURRENT LEVEL OF EDUCATION?

WHAT HAS YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH EDUCATION BEEN LIKE?

HOW ARE/WERE THE EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES AND RESOURCES IN PRISON?

Affinity Mapping

Based our user research and insights from our client, we extracted key themes and takeaways.

Pain Points

1. Lack of Motivation Given Low-Quality Education

• "Low-quality classes in prison programs didn’t require [students] to apply [themselves] and gave passing grades easily."

OUR SOLUTION

• better enable incarcerated learners to engage and use UnlockEd to pursue their educational goals by allowing users to filter courses by factors they are most interested in (certificate-granting, eligible for earned time credit, etc)

2. Difficulty Earning Time Credits

• hard to prove that incarcerated learners have spent time completing educational activities which can reduce their sentence

• currently rely on offline documentation which can be difficult to keep track of and is often not taken seriously by parole officers or judges in legal courts

OUR SOLUTION

• track learning progress, courses completed, and certificates in a professional, concise format

DESIGN

Wireframes

Alongside features necessary to create a complete education portal, we focused on ideating on the main pain points from our user research. Our wireframes consisted of 5 main pages — Home, My Courses, My Progress, Course Catalog, and Course Info.

Lo-Fis

After more UX considerations, we created low fidelity mockups which we presented to our client during our midpoint presentation.

Usability Tests

We conducted 2 usability tests to identify how users would interact with our current mockups and what improvements could be made.

Design System

Before creating our hi-fis, we created a design system with guidelines for font, size, spacing, color, and components to ensure a consistent UI throughout our team's work.

Hi-Fis

Incorporating feedback from our client and usability tests, we developed high fidelity mockups with some key changes.

THE SOLUTION

A Frigid Fate

MiniML

UnlockEd

Reach out :)