September 2022 - Present
AI-Leaners is an Educational Startup that makes learning mathematics accessible, engaging, and personalized for students with diverse cognitive, physical and visual abilities through computer games and analytics. Today, other educational websites are inaccessible, unengaging, and impersonal to each student's unique needs and learning strategies. AI-Learners goal is to have all students PreK-2nd grade thrive academically.
AI-Leaners currently has 70+ mathematics games live on their website across PreK-2nd grade levels that are being used by 20+ schools and 300+ children all across the country.
As a UX Product Designer, my responsibilities include redesigning personalized computer games utilizing the common core math standards, collaborating with the software, business, and research team to optimize solutions, and developing user flows for parents to choose recommendations, customize the math difficulty and complete the math diagnostic.
Visit the website at ai-learners.com.
Physical Abilities
After interacting with students and talking with 4 physical disabilities experts, the interaction being a "Click" enabled this game to be accessible for most students, as those with weak muscles were able to successfully play this low movement game.
Visual Abilities
Students are able to clearly visualize the difference between the "On" light bulbs and the "Off" light bulbs, as there is a color change and an addition of lines surrounding the top.
Cognitive Abilities
Creating clear buttons and to the point directions ensures that most students are able to understand the objective of these games and accurately play these unambiguous games.
When designing computer games for students with visual disabilities, I made sure that the text to background color ratio is strong and readable and took into consideration how those with specific visual disabilities might view each game.
When selecting an apple, there was disagreement among the designers over what the best way is: enlarging the apple or highlighting the apple. After speaking with 6 visual disability experts, conducting user research, and taking into consideration key visual design principles, we found that enlarging the selected apple is the best solution.
Enlarging the apple (Option 1) when selected makes the apple look visually different than the other apples. A change in color is not necessarily enough of a difference for individuals with visual disabilities, so this change in size of the apple is clearer for those with visual disabilities to understand.
One specific visual disability that we focused on is Cortical Vision Impairments (CVI). Each individual with CVI might be able to view different specific colors better than other colors.
After interviewing 5 Cortical Vision Impairment Experts, we found that those with CVI prefer dark backgrounds with brighter text (specifically yellow and red). Therefore, we added the option for all students to choose if they want to play their games in Light Mode or Dark Mode. I created a specific Color Palette that the Dark Mode games would use, in order to insure that students with CVI can successfully play each game.
AI-Learners games are played by the student themselves, so it is important that the majority of students are bale to play these games without assistance. In order to make sure that each game is accessible, they need to require low hand movement and effortless activity.
This engaging Pepperoni Pizza game has the goal of helping all students learn how to count. After interviewing students and talking with 4 physical disability experts, having the interaction be "Drag" excludes those with physical limitations. Students with weak muscles struggle with holding down and moving on the key pad for an extended period of time.
Changing the interaction to "Click" enables this game to be accessible for more students.
The entire AI-Learners website and all of the personalized computer games are responsive. Students are able to use desktop, mobile, and ipad devices.
When creating the designs, I took into consideration how each game and user flow would look across different device sizes. The desktop has hover abilities, while mobile has touch abilities. I made design decisions for the font size, spacing, number of answer choices, and placement of buttons when creating each design device layout.
The algorithm uses artificial intelligence to recommend new games for each students to play and dynamically adjusts the level difficulty for students. Each game is personalized for each user. For new AI-Learners students, this math diagnostic helps customize the games by having the parent or teacher set the student's math difficulty from the beginning, ensuring that all the recommendations are lined up with the student's current math abilities.
When designing the Math Diagnostic flow, I prioritized the flow being accessible and intuitive. The low movement on and off switch ensures that only what the student is learning is shown.
All of the clear easy-to-understand questions relating to each topic is indented underneath the color coordinated header to make it visually understandable which questions go with which mathematics topic.
There were over 30 Cornell teams competing and over 100 students, professors, and local residents attended the showcase.
View award
AI-Learners won first place in the Ronald '57 and Frederick Fichtl '86 Innovation Award for the most innovative and best developed concept.
AI-Learners won first place in the Ron G Kermisch '88 Award for the most complex innovation with a physical prototype.
