Project
About
Helping Teachers See Student Thinking in Digital Reading
Mandarin teachers had access to a digital library and weren't using it. I designed an annotation visibility system to close the gap between what teachers need to see and what the platform let them see.
Project Type
Capstone project · Based on a real business problem
duration
80 hours
Team
Solo design · Collaborated with a mentor for feedback and guidance
responsibilities
User Research · User Testing · Wireframes · Prototype
Problem
Mandarin teachers had access to a digital library but they weren't using it.
Level Learning is a K-12 literacy platform with a digital library of 1,000+ books. Teachers had access to it. They just didn't choose to use it.
Physical books: teachers see student thinking with annotation
Current digital: teachers see only the end result
I suspected the platform was missing the tools teachers needed.
Research told me the problem ran deeper than that.
solution
Text and voice annotation
Students capture thinking in whatever form they can
Voice matters because some students can't write in Chinese yet.
Annotation navigation
Teachers go straight to the thinking, not through the whole book
Jump directly to annotated pages. The icon does the flagging.
In the existing workflow
Annotations surface where teachers already are
Annotations live on the same page teachers already use for quiz results. Nothing new to learn.
New feature integrated into existing workflow
I designed annotation visibility so teachers could stop guessing what students understood.
Here's how I got there.
research
I needed to dig deeper into why teachers weren't using the library.
Mandarin teachers were new to reading instruction. Without a baseline for what good looked like, I'd be designing against the wrong standard.
Interviewing the English teachers gave me that baseline.
"Having the annotation feature can help me understand what the students are thinking, and is easy for me to use it to show learning progress."
S. Zhang, 2nd grade Mandarin teacher · Supports: visibility into student thinking
PRIORITIZATION
Teachers valued SEEING annotations over students CREATING them.
I had two possible directions. I chose to design annotation visibility for teachers first, because without it, giving students annotation tools wouldn't matter.
"Being able to annotate is good, but I won't be able to see what they highlight…it would only be helpful if I am able to see what they annotate.”
— K. Liu, 5th grade Mandarin teacher
"The annotations need to be checked by teachers, otherwise it just becomes a drawing tool, then it wouldn't be as helpful.”
— S. Dalton, 3rd grade Mandarin teacher
Neither feature is valuable without the other. They only work as a pair.
Students need tools to annotate. Teachers need to see those annotations. One without the other doesn't work.
I learned what teachers needed.
I still had to decide how to build it, and what to give up to get there.
key decisions
Reducing user friction
If a teacher has to go somewhere new to see student thinking, most of them won't.
Teachers already had a workflow for checking quiz results. I put annotations there instead of asking them to learn a new one.
Accessing annotation on where teacher currently have access to students' reading history
Adding annotation to the existing story page where teachers can currently view quiz results
Rejected: Dedicated annotation pages
I chose the path with less friction to learn over the path with less friction to build.
Teachers were already avoiding the tool. A new destination meant one more reason to skip it.
Supporting Both Text and Audio Annotations
Ten years of language teaching told me this wasn't optional.
"I like the option of voice and written memo. This will help my lower students who can't write in Chinese yet."
— A. Yao, Kindergarten Mandarin teacher · Supports: inclusion
Voice Annotation
Text Annotation
Younger students think out loud before they can write.
Adding audio annotation was an inclusion decision, not a scope expansion.
I built the thing I set out to build.
What I'd change is how I got there.
reflection
I should have concept tested before deciding what to build first.
Research confirmed the problem, not the hypothesis of my solution.
Ten years of teaching made annotation tools feel like the obvious gap. I went into interviews expecting research to confirm that direction, and it did confirm the problem, just not the solution. Teachers weren't avoiding the library because they lacked tools, but because physical books gave them a window into seeing student thinking through annotation.
My teaching background helped me ask the right questions, but coming in with a solution already in mind limited how creatively I approached solving it. What I'd do differently: after interviews, bring rough concepts to test with teachers and see which one resonates more before committing to build.
Concept testing early avoids wasted effort on the wrong direction.
Asking the right questions in research got me to the right problem, but I skipped the step that would have gotten me to the right solution sooner.