One Voice

I was a lead designer on Stride’s One Voice project, particularly for grades K-5. I created and finalized templates, style guides, and components. I worked with project managers, instructional designers, and media specialists to create content that was engaging and informative. One Voice remains an important project to me because of its focus on racial equity and diversity.

One important aspect of component development was checking its appearance on desktop and mobile. Sometimes assets had to be built completely differently between the two modes to retain their effectiveness.

Branching components could be challenges in their own right, being self-contained but with potentially varying heights depending on content. I worked did my best to maintain the height across screens by cropping images at the same size or altering the width of images to accommodate more text.

The below component from grades 6-12 is a prime example. Each screen needed to showcase instructional text, two images, and two quotes. Where I could, I cropped the images to be the same height and width, but some of the images provided couldn’t work (like the narrower portrait of Alexis de Tocqueville). In that case I matched their height so the amount of scrolling wouldn’t vary greatly between screens.

Being the lead designer meant it was my responsibility to create templates and style guides for the benefit of other designers who might join as the project progressed. I often included information inside the templates themselves as well as in the style guides made in Google Slides. Feel free to click on each image for a larger version.

English Language Arts K-5

I was a primary designer for K12’s ELA courses for grades K-5. Two different courses were made, focusing on grades K-2 and then 3-5. Each presented their own challenges, from K-2’s focus on the use of audio (since the kids can’t all read yet!) to 3-5’s different font styles to keep in mind. A different font was used for “quoted” text and I have an eye for detail. I was able to notice when the wrong font or color was used in components.

Spanish K-5

I was a designer for Stride’s refurbished Spanish courses for grades K-5. The images and content were reused from older courses and updated to match new templates and company guidelines.

Embark

I was a designer for K12’s award-winning Embark program, a project providing educational content for pre-schoolers. It won two Parents’ Choice awards in 2013 and 2014. While this course was created before the shift away from Flash, we still kept our components consistent and simple for the intended audience.