The Brief
Kiwi teaches middle schoolers the hard parts of coding helping them become self-taught developers. Their method focuses on building collaboration among students, understanding basic coding concepts, & development of critical thinking skills.
I met Kiwi's co-founder Julia Lamorelle at the 2018 ATX Hack for Change. Their goal for the weekend was to create a product to teach children the concept behind Python coding. We had 36 hours to create, sleep, and build a demo.
The Team
Our team was quite large, fluctuating between 10 - 15 people. From Kiwi there were 4 teachers from their current program. The rest of our group divided between coders & content generators; sans myself and Heather Bennett, another UX designer
The Process
understanding
As a team, we walked through a series of activities aimed at aligning the group's knowledge of Kiwi with the product goal. Using Kiwi's 5 Basic Guidelines of Python concept, we were able to get up to speed and break into our development groups.
Research
The content and design teams convened in a room with the project stakeholders to further suss out the product. We defined the user personas for the product as the viewer(s) and the proctor.
After outlining the personas we individually listed out How Might We's (HMW's) to frame the most important deliverables needed. After grouping the HMW's we were able to identify the top 5 goals for the demo.
HMW on-board the viewer through canned/guideline activity?
HMW allow open-ended responses from the viewer?
HMW turn the game into small digestible levels?
HMW incorporate positive feedback for voting (may require teacher involvement)?
HMW delight the user with fun?
Development
Our design duo got to work whiteboarding, wireframing and planning out how we could design + deliver assets to development simultaneously?
design objective
We aimed at creating an Invision prototype coupled with a design system that we could share with development. Using these elements, the dev team would be able to build the product as we finalized content placement.
project management
Having recently become accustomed to working within Abstract, I developed a similar process to merge our two files as we worked in tandem. I developed the wireframes and whiteboards into screens for our prototype as Heather, the other designer, focused on color theory & visuals.
The Result
Our team was able to create a massive amount of work within the 36 hours. For our demo, we allowed the audience to play a round of questions in the developed prototype.
findings
I never worked with such a large team before. This experience helped me understand that sometimes, communication within a team can only work with a firm hierarchy. Using our strongest members to create detailed understanding was key to our success.
Ultimately our designs were able to advance further than our demo site, but I saw the impact it made on the audience. It wasn't a picture perfect presentation. However, through our steadfast communication, I believe we were able to demo an excellent experience for our users.
what's next
Kiwi Compute is currently using our work to raise the money to build a full product! Stay tuned to kiwicompute.com for more info