Village Global Education are experts in early years education. They specialise in giving nursery educators the tools to run a successful business and offer those with a great business model, nursery best practices. In short, they help early years settings thrive.
Frances Preston, Village Global Education’s Founder, identified a gap in the market for an inexpensive, flexible and easily accessible e-learning platform. From that, a concept was born.
The Globe ED. app delivers interactive activities which up-skill or refresh users’ knowledge in bite-sized modules. Leaves on a tree visually represent modules in the app. Then, as users complete each module, the leaves change colour.
Each of the 43 leaves has five sections. And, with a total of 215 activities, they cover the key areas of early years education.
App homescreen
User login
A 'fill the blanks' activity
Custom iconography
Challenge: Take a brilliant concept, artwork and a part-built app. Then turn it around to deliver a robust product with reusable templates and an effective CMS
Village Global came to us with a solid brand and beautiful artwork. They had some existing concept design pages for their app, which covered various learning activities, and it looked great. However, looking past the veneer, it was clear each activity was over-designed specifically for a unique item of content.
The concept was brilliant, but they didn’t know what the next step should be — something they were fully aware of. What they needed was a technical partner who could truly understand their vision and translate it into a viable solution.
Our first step was to investigate the educational content they wanted to provide and how the understanding of that knowledge could be tested as the user progressed. Then we needed to devise a method the user could learn in an interactive yet staged way?
The answer was to distill the research into focused, adaptable and updatable learning mechanics and content templates. These templates needed to be interchangeable so they could build a cohesive learning journey using images text and video.
It was essential non-technical content creators could populate the app, publishing potentially large curricula. It also had to be delivered seamlessly from the admin portal to the user, as interactive, fun and responsive screens.
App user flow
Response: Create a collection of reusable templates with an easy-to-use interface
We identified six types of activity from which we could create templates. They included a slate screen, a mixed content screen, and a select or multi-select screen. In addition were a match item screen, a complete-the-sentence screen and a drag order screen.
We built a CMS in which content creators could easily establish which template works best for each activity. Then, using a visual editor, they could upload images, add text, and set the order of activities. Importantly, this meant could then see exactly what each page looked like before making them live in the app.
A simple traffic light system was used to grade users’ answers. This meant admins could quickly identify, through an analytics portal, who was doing well and who needed additional support.
Content presentation templates
- Slate screen
- Mixed content (long form content video text imagery)
- Staged info
Learning mechanics
- Match Pairs
- Drag order
- Fill the blanks
- Answer (multi)select
CMS wireframes for the user administration & analytics portal
Outcome : A slick, user-friendly app which can be used beyond its original purpose
The Globe ED. app is the epitome of great design. It is simple to use, looks great and does the job well. As a result, Village Global has identified new markets, beyond early years education, which present significant growth opportunities.
We have designed the app in such a way as to be incredibly versatile. It’s particularly useful for industries in which it’s difficult to release staff for training. The bite-sized, flexible solution is particularly suited to sectors such as retail and hospitality.
Key outcomes
- Easily scalable, versatile product
- Simple to use and simple to administer
- Significant growth opportunities
