Dara Afraz portrait
Dara Afraz
Product Strategy · Agentic AI · Design Systems

No-Code Authoring Platform for DoD Educators

A web-based platform for educators to create and share perceptual and adaptive learning modules.

Metadata

  • Customer: Advanced Distributed Learning, US Government
  • End User: DoD Educators
  • Objective: Enable educators to create adaptive training content
  • Solution: Responsive web-based authoring platform
  • Timeline: 2016—18
  • Status: Live on ADL’s warehouse (Demo available)
  • Team: Domain Experts x 2, Project Manager x 1, Engineer x 4, Design Engineer x 1 👋
  • My Role: Product design, Interaction design, Code templates, QA (design & usability)
  • Impact: The product’s timely, high-quality delivery unlocked major revenue through multiple awarded contracts.

Quick Overview

PALMs address gaps in traditional education by focusing on pattern recognition, factual, and procedural learning. ADL commissioned Insight to develop a platform that allows DoD educators to convert course content into PALMs.

Problem Statement

Mastery-based education demands more than didactic teaching. Given PALMs’ effectiveness, how can we eliminate the technical barrier for educators? How do we build a system around proprietary tech, under a high-profile client, while unlocking revenue potential?

Strategy, Planning, and Ideation

I led research, strategy, and roadmap development, driving group discussions and whiteboarding exercises. I spearheaded reverse-engineering efforts to define interaction models, UI, and workflows. Based on ideated concepts—which involved assumptions and hypotheses—I built a click-through wireframe system (over 50 screens). The goal was to have a visual guide for designing a cohesive and well-designed experience for educators.

Prototyping & Building

  • Built responsive UI templates, later converted into React components.
  • Rigorous testing across devices, browsers, and screen sizes.
  • Gathered feedback from team members, pilot educators, and novice users in both unmoderated and task-primed sessions.

Key Learnings

  • Users optimize workflows iteratively, refining modules and assets over time.
  • Small inefficiencies compound, significantly impacting UX.
  • Invalidated Hypothesis: Wizards were slow for high-volume materials, leading us to refine the main editor instead.

Refinement

I matured the product's visual language in phase. In this phase, we focused on increasing the components' quality by making them efficient and performant. Our further usability tests surfaced several edge cases that we had to address. In this phase, we also received several delayed or post-delivery feedback that we needed to address. While working on those, I also started polishing the UI and paying extra attention to the visual language of the product.

Outcomes

The timely and quality delivery of the product positioned Insight Learning Technology for significant revenue growth. The PALMs Authoring Tools system is now available for government use on desktop and mobile devices. This powerful authoring system enables easy learning module creation and leverages perceptual and adaptive pedagogical methods. Content authors can upload images and text, create and prioritize questions, set question timers, etc.

Throughout 2017 and 2018, the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) conducted usability testing of the PALMs platform and its associated authoring tool. This work led to a more robust instrument evaluation to support USMC education and training requirements.