AIRWay’s Authoring provides a interface for educators to create tests and lesson plans for students. The educators can start a project by using a template or copy an existing project from the library and share ownership.

Design Challenge

The main design challenge of this project is to create a simple and branding-neutral user interface for a complicated test creation process with added content sharing functionality. Test authoring are normally done by team of trained professionals using multiple in-house software within the workflow.  This tool aim to allow amateur users who are less computer savvy to do the same. 

Solution

I worked closely with the product manager to define requirements and create wireframes, then conducted usability studies throughout the design process. We utilized a PowerPoint-like layout that most of the users are already familiar with. It was confirmed during usability studies that the design helped them to ease into the new system, which could have been intimidating otherwise. The system is designed to work on tablets and touch screen devices in addition to the desktop machines.

First of part of the user interface allows administrative tier users to have a bird-eye view of all the tests created by authoring staff – teachers, content writers and etc; as well as the ability for each staff to share their content for approval and editing.

The second part of this authoring interface is to give the user an environment that is similar to their familiar word process and slideshow tools, along with a robust search option to let them compose

The user interface is designed to be extremely lightweight. Since the key action for the user is to search and select from thousands of existing individual test questions and compose a complete test, or to create their own, if necessary.

To help development team understand how the interaction works, as well as how the components should break down; I have created a simple html site to demonstrate the overall experience.