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AMPLIFY //
The Amplify Algebra 1 program is designed to improve statistical literacy and conceptual understanding, especially among Black and Latino students and English Learners.
Timeline
User Research, Visual Direction, Illustration, User Testing
Role
April - May 2021
Problem &
Solution
U.S. education has a data science problem. Ninety percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years, while high school math curricula have not caught up. Meanwhile, countless Americans are untrusting of margins of error or confuse correlation with causation.
Our solution seeks to improve statistical literacy and conceptual understanding in our country. It will accomplish this by building atop the statistics unit of an already strong math curriculum, making it more relevant and accessible to students, particularly Black, Latino students, English Learners and those who do not see the relevance of Algebra 1 in everyday life.
Moodboard
Knowing that our subject is Climate Change, and the students we are designing for are ages 14-16, I first came up with two visual directions (graphic style and hand-drawn style) based on my research about this age group and their preferences. I presented these two options to the team, they liked the concepts but mentioned that they would like to see the visual concept in a real context.
Visual Exploration
I took the first two pages of lesson 4 as an example and created illustrations using the style and the color from the visual concepts. The feedback I got from the team is that they think the illustrations don't really help students understand the context of lesson, it would be better if the illustrations also help tell the story, because one of the goals for designing this curriculum is to elevate the understanding of math language.
Student Interview
To better understand the kind of visual styles students would prefer, we decided to add another two styles (comic style and infographic style) for students to choose from during the interview and ask them to rank the styles from their most favorite to least favorite. The preference we learned after speaking with a number of students is that most students like the infographic style followed by the hand-drawn style.
Sketches
Knowing the students' visual style preference, and with the idea to better tell the story via illustrations, I read through the entire lesson and discussed with the curriculum designer to see how I can better interpret the story. I then came up with a few thumbnail sketches for each part of the lesson and showed them to the team, this time I got positive feedback from the team, so I then turned some of the sketches into illustrations.
Design
Final Design
I created the illustrations and adapted the color and the style from the infographic style, there are some sample pages from lesson 4. I designed the entire lesson which we then used to apply for the 2nd phase of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Balance the Equation: A Grand Challenge for Algebra 1” grant.
Background
Before I joined, the team at Amplify already developed a curriculum called Statistics Bootcamp in regards to climate change to help students gain a deeper conceptual understanding of data and statistics, learn the facts about climate change and how they can make an impact. The team have been awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s “Balance the Equation: A Grand Challenge for Algebra 1” (The Grand Challenge) grant program. With me joining the team, the team hopes to leverage a visual approach to learning mathematics, making advanced concepts more accessible to a broader population of students and create a sample lesson with more refined design to apply for the 2nd phase of the grant. Learn more
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