Case Study

Teaching Web Application Design & Development

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Sesame Workshop is an independent nonprofit organization on a mission to help kids everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder.The people at Sesame Workshop are educators, Creators, Researchers, Moms, Dads, Caregivers, and Friends. They are a community of 400+ people who are passionate about helping children. They're present in more than 150 countries, providing almost two hundred million children with access to life-changing early education, critical health lessons, and helpful tools for challenging situations. And joy. Lots of joy.

The Challenge

Sesame Workshop partnered with Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to create a specialized curriculum for teachers working with Pre-K3 and Pre-K4 kids. The program’s overall goal is to help educators teach Social Emotional Learning (SEL) subjects to young kids. Sesame teaching staff, psychologists, and other specialists spent months creating this unique program, aiming at educating teachers and giving them tools to pass this knowledge to pupils.

Sesame hired Nopio to convert classic paper-oriented content into a digital-friendly format that could be normalized and stored in a database for future updates and enhancements. On top of the content piece, a custom web platform needed to be designed and built to allow schools to buy access to the gated content.

Solution

The project took place in two distinctive phases. The first phase focused on content management and providing direct access for the educators to track their progress through the curriculum using the predefined weekly checklists. The second phase was business-oriented and extended the system with paid licenses and access management at the district and school levels.

Nopio started the first phase with an in-depth review of the available content. Working with Sesame, the team extrapolated the data and the content management requirements. The team created a fully custom, branded web application based on that groundwork. One condition was to make the application teacher-first but still very attractive to the young children who will see parts of the system during classroom activities. Finally, an intuitive user experience was paramount for the project to be adopted by educators in the field.

The system was extended during the second phase with an exclusive license management feature and an onboarding workflow for district and school administration staff. This feature allowed administrators easily to set up and manage teacher permissions.

As part of the brand update, the Nopio Design team created a library of product-related illustrations. These illustrations are influenced by Swiss Style design and incorporate visual elements from Fathom’s mapping methodology. Adding deliberate illustration to branding helps to add visual cohesiveness to any project. When translated to posters, t-shirts, or other collateral, such illustrations make delightful promotional material.

What Sesame Workshop Gained

  • A fully custom platform to provide the program content to teachers nationwide.
  • A bespoke solution that fits their specific needs, market, and audiences.
  • A platform built with the future in mind.
  • An easy to use web application.
  • A long-term trusted technology partner.

Key Deliverables

Information Architecture (AI)

UX/UI Audit and Direction

Responsive Web Design

Project Planning (Specification Creation)

Custom Software Developed to Specification

CMS Training

AWS Infrastructure Design

AWS Infrastructure Build

Testimonial

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Tina Moglia Supervising Producer, Digital Production
Sesame Workshop

Nopio's team worked diligently with us as partners in defining the project requirements and coming up with innovative technical and design solutions and have continued to be great partners as we pilot this program.

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