Designing a System to Improve Learning for Children Ages 5-8 in Lagos State

In sub-Saharan Africa, a large percentage of children lack access to quality education. To address this problem in Nigeria, we set out to explore ways to improve the learning and development of children of ages 5-8 years within the underclass public school system. Carrying out Human-centered design, the team leveraged design methods to design a measurable and resourceful system that employs the efforts of the key trifecta: parents, teachers and children, to track, measure and improve children’s learning and development.

Client & Partner: lagos state public schools (pro-bono)

Location: lagos, nigeria

We studied a total of 15 teachers, multiple students and parents in two different tiers of public schools: Federal and State, engaging with parents at home and in PTA (Parent Teacher Associations) Meetings, carrying out semi-structured interviews, intercepts, shadowing and observations to learn about their beliefs, lifestyles and experiences with children’s learning, and at school environments. We probed into their future aspirations and current experiences around education, and collected data into themes, drawing out insights and turning them into ideas to further test with.

We quickly discovered that though many existed, there were 3 main characters at play when considering the learning and development of the average 5-8 year old public school child. Parents, teachers and the children themselves were integral to a child’s successful development and leveraging their relationship in the context of Nigerian public school education had the potential to greatly improve the development of the public school child, in the early years.

Inspired by the SWOT framework, we converted the elements into 4 areas we discovered many of the children we studied fell into in their learning and development journey. Under each category, each child is evaluated by the i) activities and habits that they are strong in, ii) those that they need to improve on, iii) those that they show potential to thrive in, and iv) avoid and those that they should avoid. In the child’s development, we focused on the 6 key areas of development- General, Social, Language, Literacy, Math & Logic and Other Skills.

Using friendly and visually engaging aides so we created prototypes using physical and digital means, for physical, we used color coded sheets where stakeholders could grade each child’s ‘performance’ simply on paper, and access resources on a simple digital platform. With a diverse audience in mind, we devised a basic way feature phones could be used by parents who didn’t have smart phones or weren’t tech savvy so they could actively participate in accessing resources to help their children at home, while sharing information.

We built a working prototype of the system, made up of a framework that employs the efforts of the key trifecta: parents, teachers and children, to track and measure their learning progress. The framework contains an easy grading, reward and support resource that allows all 3 stakeholders: parents, children and teachers to measure where a child is excelling or needing assistance in 6 core developmental areas. The solution provides all stakeholders—from active web users to those with limited technical skills—seamless access to curated resources through the web, SMS (for feature phones), or printed materials, ensuring targeted support for each child. During prototype testing, we discovered that teachers were already overwhelmed with their daily responsibilities. To address this, we integrated the system directly into their term plans and the school’s existing schedule. This approach offered structure, support, and ease, allowing instructors to use the tool effortlessly.

The ‘AHA’ moment for us came when we understood that there was already a powerful network between the trifecta of parents, children and teachers, and leveraging this triad to aid children’s learning, could be a game-changer.

Methods & Activities

Context inquiry

Stakeholder mapping

In-situ observation research

Community engagement sessions

Quantitative research

Prototyping

Stakeholder report building