HMH Ed – Courseware Platform

Back in the day, delivering digital content to schools meant throwing PDFs and Flash files onto a website. "Digital" was a checklist item. As users evolved, so did publishers by developing what we now commonly know as courseware platforms.

I was the Lead Design Architect while building version 1 of HMH Ed, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's newest courseware platform. My role was over the user experience design, user interface design, and information architecture. I worked with engineers, designers, content strategists, and product directors.

Research and Define the User Problem

Gather needs from customer feedback of the old platform
Gather needs from teachers
Gather needs from internal stakeholders
Prioritize the features and functionality with the business analyst, scrum master, head engineer, and product owner
Together, build an initial site architecture and hierarchy

UX & UI Design

Sketched initial wireframes on whiteboard
Put together quick prototypes in Axure and printed them out
Did some internal user testing to get general sense of usability
Designed higher fidelity prototypes in Axure with full clickability
Showed prototypes to the Education Advisory Panels (groups of Teachers around the country)
Adjusted designs based on all stakeholder feedback
Created visual design in Sketch

Development

Worked with engineers to set up common components and specs
Turned over specs via Zeplin
Worked with engineers to resolve design issues as they came up during 2-week sprints
QA'd the design in build

Communicated completed stories with all stakeholders via sprint demos
Gather feedback on how the curriculum products changed and therefore what needs to adjust on the platform
Incorporate feedback into upcoming sprint plan
Measure performance with data analytics

HMH Ed – Courseware Platform

HMH Ed – Courseware Platform

Research and Define the User Problem

UX & UI Design

Development

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