A Policitical Education Platform for Youths
Client: Shout Out UK Market: Schools, Universities, Local Orgs & Communities
Product: Online Political Learning Portal
Website: www.education.shoutoutuk.org
Shout Out UK (SOUK) is a multi-award winning education platform and creative social enterprise. Fusing education and Edtech with creative film production and animation ensures world-class training and programmes on Media & Political Literacy that will be sure to engage and educate.
As the Product Designer, I was responsible for designing and building the educational portal with the Online Literacy Course for both students and teachers.
The Challenge
ShoutOutUK required an online learning platform for individual students and teachers within the public and private higher education. The purpose was to enable students to learn flexibly, engage them through learning, spread awareness, and finally, encourage young people to express their views, to shout out and be heard in the political sphere.
For the students, the purpose of the course was to facilitate learning, memorising and testing their knowledge. The portal had to allow the students to see the results and receive feedback from the teachers. For the teachers, it was a requirement to book external teachers and speakers for workshops and assign the online course to their students on the portal. They also were interested in finding academic resources, downloading reports and viewing polls’ results to see the students’ voting intentions.
Solution
The project kicked off by discussing the requirements and technical constraints followed by stakeholder interviews. I gathered and analysed the insights about the users, reviewed the existing offline product and searched for similar ideas on the market. We organised workshops where we were brainstorming and discussing different ideas.
I created the first sketches, iterated them according to the stakeholder’s feedback and created the first low-fidelity prototypes. I tested my assumptions with users: students and teachers to find potential issues. After iterating my prototypes, I focused on adding more details to the screens. When working on high-fidelity designs, I tried to keep the consistency with the ShoutOut UK branding, but also add more negative space to create modern and clean layouts.
The final solution is a yearly all-encompassing membership platform which provides students with the tools necessary to engage in politics. The platform consists of the Political Literacy Course, a polling system, the ability to set up a student union/council and a blogging set up that allows students to share their content on the website.
Low Fidelity Wireframes - Website
High Fidelity Designs - Teacher Portal
High Fidelity Designs - Student Portal
High Fidelity Design - Website Conversion/Landing Page
User Feedback
“We have finally got all of our Year 10’s through the course!
We are very happy with the E-platform, it is very easy to use. The student’s especially enjoyed the graphic animation films that went with the course!”
“Young people have important, inspiring contributions to make to politics and yet their voices are too often ignored. This course can help equip them with the tools to challenge decision-makers better.”
“The students who attended have said that they found it very interesting and one of them has been inspired to apply to become a member of the UK Youth Parliament!”
“The students have loved using the platform, they have found it easy to navigate once logged in and have enjoyed the content.”
“Understanding politics is part of being an active and engaged citizen – a civic responsibility – and this course will give you the tools necessary to understand and engage in politics.”
“I found the E-platform easy to navigate, with lots of interactive features and links to other material. Teaching resources were also very good.”
The Result
https://education.shoutoutuk.org/ The platform has now a considerable amount of students from high schools and universities signed up to the yearly paid membership that engages more than 1000 students. The funds raised from the product are re-invested further to develop the product and to aide content creation on their main website and social channels.