YEAR + TIMELINE

2019 /
7 weeks

DESIGNED FOR

European Prize "Blockchains for Social Good"

TOPIC

Education, Blockchain, Finance, P2P, OpenBadge, Digital Credentials

MY ROLE

Ideation, Brand identity, Visual direction, UX/UI design

TEAM

Tech lead, Developers, Blockchain experts,
IT professors

OUTPUT

Logo, Mobile app,
Click-through Prototype,
Documentation

¶  Kick-off

What do you get when you combine a designer with developers who share a interest in blockchain? Our goal was to discover a way to use that fresh technology for good. Our solution: education.

We wondered what could be done to not only improve student's commitment, but also keep the school systems up-to-date with the latest technology. An idea struck us: what if we registered students' achievements on blockchain, while rewarding said achievements with bitcoin?

We decided to experiment with our idea first, trying out the theory with highschoolers: it quickly became visible how motivating bitcoin was to students, who already had a thorough understanding of blockchain and were eager to participate.

After multiple rounds of positive testing in several classes, the team decided to challenge themselves by applying for a prize offered by EU "Blockchain for social good".

MY CONTRIBUTION

As the only designer among a football team of developers, I was responsable for every single piece: from the logo to the real digital product, taking care of UX/UI, userflows, and prototypes.

Our idea

So, pragmatically GrowBit – our chosen name – is a blockchain-based social classroom application, which provides the students a digital repository of their earned grades, achieved badges aligned to the EU standard and gained scholarships. In order to manage all this data, GrowBit mashups different technologies such as digital high school registries, blockchain, IPFS, Open Badges, WebRTC, and asymmetric cryptography.

You can read the entire project's history on Medium, including the full document for the EU Prize.

LOGO

Defining GrowBit's character

I started to design the logo at a very early stage, in order to help comunicate the project to students and teachers. I decided to use the owl since it's a well-known symbol of wisdom, using this bird as the messanger for each activity the student is going to have feedback on. The style is simple, but rich in detail, with a touch of cartoonish treatment to friendly connect with every student.

APP

App structure and main flows

In order to explain the most important functionalities and the overall experience for the Prize application, I designed these main flows. The click-through prototype is viewable on InVision.

01.
Student's feed

02.
Badge system

03.
Scholarships

04.
School subjects

05.
Certification flows

01.

Student's feed

From a navigation perspective, the student has access to whatever he needs once he's inside the landing page. Just inside the light blue area the student can see his profile, his total amount of scholarships, his feed and his badges. "Your feed" tab is like a diary, a repository with all the activities that the student can engage with directly, or receive from his classmates as well as from his sponsors (angels/companies/foundations).

The feed starts with “Today” or “This week” period section. Every period section contains all the badges and the most important events in chronological order (most recent ones first). 

02.

Student's badges

On the landing page, “Your badges” tab shows the repository of all badges, pertaining both to school subjects and self-certified abilities. "Abilities" we define as all the skills or competencies that a student can acquire outside of secondary education, including various fields, like music, sport, languages, etc.

The badges from school subjects can either be: A. Combo Badge – when the student achieves a combination of certain kinds of results in different school subjects (i.e. grade 8 in Literature, English, and History), and B. Sequence – when the student consequently gets the same good mark in the same school subject.

03.

Scholarships and other funding

In this section the student will see the amount achieved expressed both in Bitcoin and in Euro currency. Under the “Transactions” tab the student can view all his financial activities contributing to his total amount: here he’ll see all the GrowBit scholarships and the ones by angels, if any. 

Under the “Overview” tab the student can see first an aggregated view of how much he and his classmates have achieved, because our focus is on mutual cooperation inside the classroom.

STUDY ABROAD FUNDING SECTION

Another opportunity that allows students to collect money is Study Abroad Funding. 
Basically, as on Kickstarter or Indiegogo, the student can request funding for his abroad experience from the list of angels, companies, or foundations available.

04.

School subjects

The student can see an overview of each school subjects in his academic program, including a list of grades, relative badges and subject trends, both personal and of his class.

In the school subject detail screen the student will see the title of the subject and the related ESCO badge: tapping on it, the student will be linked to the ESCO definition of this Open Badge subject.

05.

Certification flows

There are two main flows, which are grade certification and self-certification for outside abilities. Both processes can be started by tapping on the blue floating action button in the bottom right corner of the landing page, identified by a fingerprint icon.

The first one is prompted from the app on the landing page through a card, pushed through on a weekly-basis reminding students to keep their grades up-to-date. The second one is activated directly by the student, tapping on the blue floating button.