14% increase
In conversion
Seesaw Learning Desktop Redesign
Led redesign of Seesaw Learning's desktop experience used by millions of teachers, students, and school administrators, leading to increased usability and conversion.
14% increase
In conversion
My role
Designer
What I did
Research Wireframe & Prototyping Design Data Analysis
Timeline
10 months
Tools
Figma Amplitude UserBrain Lyssna
What is Seesaw?
Seesaw connects 25+ million teachers, administrators, students, and families to support each child's learning journey from PreK through 6th grade.
Within Seesaw, a teacher can:
- Send 1:1 and group messages to family members
- Document student work in a digital portfolio
- Assign interactive digital activities to students
The problems
Over the years, we'd heard consistent feedback that our navigation created several user challenges:
- Hard to understand everything Seesaw had to offer
- Difficult to move between different areas of the product
Our old experience also created several business challenges:
- Very challenging for the product to scale over time
- Hard to localize into other languages
Where I always start: Research
I led extensive research to understand the problem space and validate our assumptions:
- 🎙️ Conducted Stakeholder interviews to help align on project goals.
- 📊 Analyzed current product usage metrics and key funnels.
- 🧐 Conducted competitive research of edtech products to identify common patterns.
- 🧪 Conducted interviews and usability tests of current product with new and existing teachers.
Aligning on project principles
Based on our research, we established three design principles to guide the project:
1. Get teachers to the starting point — Address funnel drop-offs by making key features like Messages and the Activity Library discoverable from the main navigation. 55% of teachers never entered Messages in a given month — we needed to change that.
2. Teacher and student experiences should match — The teacher desktop experience should mirror the student experience so teachers can model activities in the classroom.
3. Avoid mid-year disruption — Teachers are creatures of habit, especially mid-year. We needed to minimize disruption for existing teachers while improving the experience for new ones.
Design & testing
The design process was highly iterative, with multiple rounds of testing:
- 📐 Created wireframes and prototypes.
- 🧪 Conducted usability tests using prototypes with new and existing teachers.
- 🖼️ Conducted concept tests with existing teachers.
- 🧪 Worked with engineering to develop an A/B testing strategy using LaunchDarkly and Amplitude.
The vision
Mid way through the project, I created this animation to help align the team and create a shared vision of project scope.
Although the designs weren't final, it helped the team quickly understand that many changes were simply moving existing elements into more logical places - while some changes were net new, like adding a homepage. This animation served as a helpful artifact we returned to throughout the project.
Sweating the details
Final results
The new experience resulted increased conversion and set a flexible foundation to easily add new functionality.
16% increase
in entering Messages
14% increase
in sending messages
40% improvement
in median time to send first message
“It's easy to find what I'm looking for!”
Teacher in product survey response
“Everything looks great! I love the changes.”
Teacher in product survey response
16% increase
in entering Messages
14% increase
in sending messages
40% improvement
in median time to send first message
“It's easy to find what I'm looking for!”
Teacher in product survey response
“Everything looks great! I love the changes.”
Teacher in product survey response