Youth Media Challenge

KQED’s Education team focuses on media literacy and amplifying student perspectives. During the shift to remote learning, the Youth Media Challenge was created to give students a structured way to share their voices on meaningful topics.

However, the initial experience lacked clarity, scalability, and usability across its three core audiences: teachers, students, and families.

I led the design of a more intuitive, flexible platform that simplified participation, improved submission workflows, and laid the groundwork for discovery through search.

Design a system that effectively serves three distinct user groups with very different needs:

• Teachers → Create and manage challenges, guide students, review submissions
• Students → Submit and edit work easily with minimal friction
• Families → Discover and view student work (e.g., finding a child's submission)

At the same time, we had to:

• Align with evolving stakeholder expectations
• Work within a small engineering team (2 backend, 1 full-stack)
• Deliver quickly during an active school year

My Role

Lead Product Designer

• Defined product direction and user flows
• Designed teacher and student experiences end-to-end
• Conducted user interviews and usability testing
• Collaborated closely with Product, Engineering, and stakeholders
• Balanced user needs with technical constraints and timelines

1. Rapid Concepting & Validation

I started by creating proofs of concept (POCs) for both teacher and student experiences based on expected behaviors and mental models.

These were:

• Presented directly to teachers and students
• Iterated through multiple rounds of feedback
• Refined through qualitative interviews

This allowed us to validate assumptions early and avoid overbuilding.

2. Navigating Stakeholder Influence

The initial product direction was heavily shaped by stakeholders with strong personal investment.

I:

• Facilitated discussions to refocus on user needs
• Used research insights to support design decisions
• Balanced stakeholder vision with usability and scalability

This helped align the team around a more user-centered approach without derailing progress.

3. Prioritization Under Constraints

Given limited engineering resources, we focused on delivering core functionality first:

• Teacher onboarding and challenge creation
• Student submission flow
• Foundational search experience

The family experience was intentionally scoped for a later phase, ensuring we shipped a strong MVP.

Teacher Experience

Teachers needed quick clarity before committing

I designed flows that answered critical questions upfront:

• What is this challenge about?
• How does it fit into my curriculum?
• How much time will this take?
• What resources are available?

The onboarding flow made it:

• Easy to join
• Low-risk to explore (no penalty for opting out)

Student Submission Flow

Students needed a frictionless way to submit work.

I designed a:

• Clean, structured submission form
• Step-by-step input experience
• Clear required fields to prevent incomplete submissions

This reduced confusion and increased completion rates.

Search & Discovery (Elastic Search)

To support families and broader discovery, we implemented a lightweight search experience:

• Reverse chronological feed
• Fuzzy search capability
• Simple filters:
  • City
  • School
  • Topic
  • Student name
  • Teacher name

The UI was intentionally minimal to ensure fast adoption and easy navigation.

The team structure (2 backend, 1 full-stack engineer) required tight alignment.

• Engineering integrated Elastic Search from the start
• I worked closely with them to keep UI simple and feasible
• We prioritized speed and scalability over complexity

This collaboration allowed us to deliver quickly without sacrificing core usability.

Early results post-launch showed strong momentum:

• 📈 Increase in sign-ups and returning users
• 👍 Positive teacher feedback in follow-up interviews
• 🚀 Smooth adoption despite being a rolling, year-long challenge

Beyond metrics, the project had a broader impact:

• Strengthened trust between Education and Product teams
• Established a scalable foundation for future iterations
• Demonstrated the value of user-centered design in an education context

• Designing for multiple audiences requires ruthless prioritization
• Early user validation prevents costly misalignment
• Simple, clear flows outperform feature-heavy solutions
• Strong cross-functional collaboration is critical in small teams

• Expand and refine the family-facing experience
• Introduce personalization and saved searches
• Add richer media browsing and storytelling features
• Continue iterative testing with teachers and students