Context

• iônica is a Learning Management System (LMS) created by FTD Educação, one of the 50 most relevant publishing companies in the world. It was designed for students to access digital books and complete activities, teachers to create assignments and teach online classes, and school administrators to better manage their institutions. Currently, this product is used by over 4,000 schools, which comprise 155,000 students and 17,000 teachers.
• This product was built as a web application, and I have been deeply involved in designing the user experience for the mobile version, whose MVP was launched in late 2023. Currently, the app focuses only on student-specific features, including access to digital books and announcements from course coordinators.
• This case study highlights my work in developing one of the most requested features: enabling students to complete quizzes, assignments, exams, and projects directly within the app.

1. Discovery Phase

Desk research

I started this project by deep diving into iônica's current user journey for students’ assignments on the web application. I mapped all the existing types of assignments and questions while taking note of all the information they presented, as well as the different ways that students could access and answer them.

I also had productive conversations with the designers from other squads to learn about any changes they were planning to the user journey and find out if they had any insights from their recent research.

Map of a student's journey while completing each type of assignment, and the informations the assignments presented on their different statuses (pendent, delivered, etc)

Benchmarking

While still on the discovery phase of the project, the squad's content designer and I did some visual and content benchmarking of apps from other Brazilian education companies (e.g., Plurall) and renowned educational platforms, such as Duolingo and Google Classroom.

2. Sketching the User Flow

With the insights gathered from the Discovery phase, I was able to design the student's user flow by adapting the web app's version while accounting for the limitations imposed by the mobile experience. I then presented my proposal to the stakeholders in my squad so that I could get feedback and understand its technical viability.