Google Education Platform
Google for Education, plays a huge role in providing Chromebook’s and collaborative resources and tools for teachers and students in line with an initiative (GIGA) implemented by the Japanese government in 2018 to develop children’s digital literacy.
During the pandemic Google for Education Japan, grew 5500% due to the GIGA initiative mandating each student in Grade 1-9 to have 1 device each, but teachers didn’t feel comfortable or equipped to help their students, due to their low digital literacy.
We redesigned a platform that empowers teachers to understand how digital tools transform education, ensuring it is collaborative and student-centric and most importantly helps to develop skills for an AI future.
A comprehensive component library built to expand
Starting with Google’s Design Systems, we built a Library of components with illustrations, buttons and interactions that teachers would be able to navigate and understand.
Step by step guidance for teachers who were new to navigating online education.
Given that the majority of Japan’s Educators were unfamiliar with teaching online, we had to strip interactions down to their basic forms. This meant challenging our knowledge of how we navigate websites.
A Guided platform that supports Educators to understand the GIGA Google Education Initiative
The GIGA Education offering through Google was huge. We disseminated thousands of pages to explain to Educators and Leaders how Google Education would support the GIGA mission.
Contextual tooltips helped low digital literacy users navigate the website
Contextual support further aided teachers in navigating their way through interactions.
A comprehensive component library built to expand
The result of our efforts was a component library featuring over 200 components that tied each aspect of the Google Education site together.
Wondering how we got there? Let’s rewind to the Vision.
Empower teachers use Google tools
Organize and present resources and programs in a way that encourages and empowers them
Create opportunities a engage with high schools
Provide information relevant to high school education and anticipate their needs ahead of time
Provide information in a friendly, relatable way
Entice and excite schools about implementing the Google program, creating transparency about the lasting impact.
Nurture digital dexterity of teachers and students
Empower users and teachers to use the tools to hone their digital skills and develop their lectures online
Discovery saw us conducting research, speaking with stakeholders, developing user flows and undertaking a best-in-class audit of competitors
Research into the current market revealed digital literacy was a major concern
93% of high schools in Japan saw more need in implementing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) this past year
80% of educators are concerned about their digital literacy
65% of educators are concerned about engaging and motivating students to hold lectures online
Developing a stakeholder discussion guide helped us to understand users and uncover business sentiment
Understand brand purpose, vision and distinct opportunities for the future within Google Education
Uncover the current business state and sentiments in relation to both websites
Better understand local users and their needs helping us to identify the current pain points, needs and key insights
User flows showed the existing site was difficult to navigate
We looked into the users of GIGA, how often they came to the site and the ways in which they accessed key information to begin to map out popular content and the paths users took to get there. Our observations concluded that the existing site was difficult to navigate, included a lot of unnecessary subpages and unexpected PDF downloads.
A best -in-class Experience Audit identified value propositions from top industry players.
A clear hierarchy and dynamic information are key
Creating a tailored, step by step experience that excites users is important to encourage repeat usage
Tone of voice is imperative for facilitating a progressive journey
The Definition phase allowed us to lay the foundation of Google Education and using all the insights and data we collected we were able to form a North Star that served all users
Mapping User Journeys allowed us to identified the pathways that empowered users to access information
Experience Principles became our North Star and spoke to our initial intention and value proposition
A complex architecture underwent a huge transformation
It was evident from initial Discovery that a new information architecture needed to be considered. The huge challenge here was that our scope was only to redesign primary pages, however, Google for Education also needed all subpages and existing content to remain on the site.
We began to map content across the site, identifying duplicate content, content to be discussed and categorization that centered the identified users and their journeys, comprehensively developing the new site architecture.
Wireframing the platform allowed us to build components in line with any development constraints, while also strategizing interactions.
The result of our teams work, was a brand new platform that empowered its users to understand and explore how Google for Education enhances learning and digital literacy.
See the platform live at giga.withgoogle.com
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