Case Study
Learna
Tackling the Chronic Misalignment in the National Teacher Labor Market
How can we address the national teacher shortage while creating a more transparent view of the teacher labor market?
Company
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Confidential
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Skills
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MVP Design
Formative Evaluation
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Duration
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Sep 2024 - Dec 2024
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Team
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Lead UX/UI Designer (Me)
UX Researcher
Business Analysts
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Overview
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In the current American educational landscape, minority students face significant challenges in navigating the job market and leveraging professional networks for career exploration. Family backgrounds often play a pivotal role in shaping students’ career perspectives, but many families, particularly those who are low-income or first-generation immigrants, lack the resources, networks, and market knowledge to provide adequate guidance. These barriers are compounded by limited access to mentorship opportunities, further widening the gap in career readiness for underrepresented students.
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Problem
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Minority students from low-income and first-generation backgrounds face significant barriers in navigating the job market due to limited family networks, cultural and linguistic challenges, and insufficient mentorship opportunities. Existing career tools often lack the depth and real-world connections necessary to guide these students effectively toward their goals.
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Solution​
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A tailored digital platform can bridge this gap by providing culturally relevant career resources and mentorship opportunities that connect students with professionals from similar backgrounds. By equipping students, parents, and educators with accessible tools and insights, the platform empowers minority students to explore and pursue their career aspirations confidently.
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Final Prototype
The designs were turned into an MVP using a pre-existing design system that included Material UI components which I added to in order to share with users and stakeholder.
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By working directly with users early and often, we were able to quickly iterate as well as address usability issues before development. This is where we landed prior to development.
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Click here for production website.
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Final Prototype Animation
UX Research
In order to explore and gain a full understanding of the problem space, our team conducted research including user interviews and competitive analysis.
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Findings
Lack of Existing Data:
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Despite reports of a national teacher shortage crisis, the available data to explain in more detail was not robust.
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The U.S. Department of Education's shortage data offers only a binary view, lacking crucial magnitude details that could indicate the severity of shortages in a given district.
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The National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS), a consistent source of staff data, presents vacancy information only once every four years.
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Teachershortages.com, established to bridge this data gap, operates manually and lacks the efficiency of automation.
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Misunderstanding of Existing Data:
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There is a profound misalignment of supply and demand. Even neighboring districts in the same city exhibit starkly different teacher staffing scenarios.
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We hypothesized that there is an inability for users to easily understand the current landscape of teacher vacancies due to a lack of comprehensive, easy to manipulate data.
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" In contrast to other sectors, education seems to be allergic to data."
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- Directors of Georgetown’s Edunomics Lab
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Users
Our users include:
Current Teachers
Aspiring Teachers
Recruiters
Policy Makers
The Challenge
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Our mission is to convert an exaggerated headline into a tangible solution by empowering both job-seekers and districts with actionable information. By shedding light on areas with the most significant needs, our tool aims to provide teacher candidates with nationally representative data on where their skills are in demand. Simultaneously, this initiative equips recruiting leaders (often principals) with the means to orchestrate national recruitment campaigns. Recognizing that a shift in teacher recruitment demands essential tools and information, our project stands as a proactive response to this critical need.
With this in mind, I further iterated on an existing product and created additional features for MVP and production phases.
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Marketing Material and Job Modal
Design Exploration
I joined the project after some initial features and designs were created. However, these early designs and features needed more clarity and cohesion for a seamlessly working platform. Moreover, there was a need for the development of additional features. Given the constraints of tight timelines, I embarked on an exploration encompassing branding, styling, and new feature development. Each exploration of features and branding design was accompanied by a detailed analysis, weighing the pros and cons, along with additional reflections.
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A sample of design explorations
Map View and Interaction
Users can enter a map view of the country, finding where job availability is per region or per district. Users can zoom in if there is an area of interest. Once they reach a district on the map, a "list view" is available allowing them to move to list view and look at all available jobs in that district.
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Map view design
Job Board List View
There is currently no comprehensive database for teachers to find and learn about teaching opportunities. During user interviews, we found that teachers often constantly check job listings of a few schools or districts of note, and very often do not look outside of their area because of concerns about their teacher license transferring to another state.
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List view design
Iterative Feedback
After the above designs were finished in marking with our scope at the time, we presented this iteration of our work to various stakeholders to collect and incorporate feedback.
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Some key findings:
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Users would benefit from a location filter on the map view, similar to list view, if they do not wish to manually manipulate the map
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Our license transferability measurement was too granular and difficult to interpret, instead showcasing an "easy, medium, or hard" measurement allows users to more quickly understand
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Though adding an additional space for "average teacher salary" in our job modal is controversial for our product, this is valued highly by users in creating trust and transparency
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With these findings in mind, we iterated and changed the scope of our project for the next iteration. This included a location filter, simplified license transferability scale, and the addition of average teacher salary in the job modal.
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Iterated design changes on important screens
Public Design & Soft Launch
Mobile Splash Page Animation
Production splash page images
Takeaways
This project is actively being tested and piloted in the field at career fairs and school fairs in New Mexico with additional features being designed. We have already seen quick engagement and excitement for WorkinEd, including recommendations on adding the "preview jobs by state" feature on our splash page as an official offering in our product.
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The iterative design process, combined with user interviews, enabled us to create a homepage that effectively conveys our product's unique value proposition and engages our target audience.