Inner Geek Education
When the team from Inner Geek Education came to us, we knew this was going to be something special. A fully interactive “Fun and quirky e-learning web app based around the current GCSE syllabus. With heavy time constraints built into the brief we had to hit the ground running.
The Brief
We needed to design and build a platform that would appeal to 16 year olds, their parents and of course their teachers, with 4 different user accounts each one having a totally unique set of features and characteristics, we certainly had our hands full. Finally, there was the quiz section. Over 4,500 questions with fully customisable question formats that the schools could create themselves with no coding skills? What a brief!
Planning
We put together several types of wireframes to reflect the user experience and journey for each different user type. This allowed the client to fully grasp our ideas, as well as adding their own input. In turn we ensured full clarity between us. For such a complex system with multiple users, it was key that our vision matched that of the client. It also gave the Study Smart and JBi teams to knock their heads together and really nail the user flow. Essentially, all this business speak means that before even one design had been done, our client knew what they were going to get. Easy peazy, lemon…well, you know the rest.
Design
Time to take those oh so boring wireframes and build a brand. Swathes of colour were added and soon enough we felt like we were part of a Dulux ad (they’re colourful, right?). Feedback from the Study Smart team was instantaneous and overwhelmingly positive – our favourite type! It was important that the designs were consistent throughout the app and also the marketing website to ensure a consistent brand identity was formed that matched the personality of the Study Smart team. So onwards we went, until we had replaced all those boring wireframes with (if we do say so ourselves) some of fantastic designs.
Development
In order that the system was as user friendly as possible, we built the whole system on top of WordPress, the popular open source platform. The system was built to be scalable for thousands of schools on a MySQL database. This was then implemented using cloud based architecture with individual virtual sites for each registered school. Each innovative question type was built to be fully responsive and was able to be created by the client without any technical development skills needed. Pheeeeeewwww, another way to put would be that A LOT of caffeine was needed in order for us to create this amazing app in time! But when the end product works as well as this one does, it just doesn’t matter. With a(nother) happy client and a system we can truly be proud of, paired up with a beautifully simple and clean marketing website, the development team outdid themselves.
Final Set Up
We’ll be honest here; this was one of the biggest testing jobs we have ever done. The UAT phase brought up some bits and bobs that needed to be sorted out, but these were quickly ironed out and the end result was seamlessly superb (or something similarly modest).
The Results
Well, we’re pretty chuffed to say the least with the finished application. However, lets face it, the true success of this project will be judged on user feedback and engagement. So when we saw that within just 2 weeks of launching, Study Smart had over 200 schools signed up to trial accounts, with more in the pipeline we were pretty pleased.
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