Spent the past week and a half designing and launching a new page on our current Website to highlight the Parent App (Beta). It's currently out now if you want to check it both oin mobile and desktop:

runsandbox.com/parentapp

Also added a promotional spot for it on the homepage

Spent most the week working on the prototype for a whole NEW Sandbox App that's dedicated to Teachers. Can't say too much about it yet but it's going to be really exciting. I'll be spending more time ironing this out in the next few weeks and translating it to Desktop & Mobile.

Our Capterra page needed a revamp so we designed new banners to replace them

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Spent the first few days of the week putting together a graphic for a new 10x8 Booth for our trade shows.

We're expecting to ship these for print by next week.

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Due to the high bounce rate of people clicking Free Trial on Mobile plus the bad UX after signup we decided to remove the Try It Free Button ONLY on mobile view and replaced it with just the "Request a Demo" button

Visitors can still Sign Up for a free trial when they're browsing on a desktop computer.

We will test this strategy for a week and see how high our Demos go.

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Still working on a redesigned prototype of the Teacher App starting from a new Web Interface.

Added Child view and Activity Logging this week.

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This is a rough sample UI for the Capacity Planning feature that we are preparing for Tiny Hoppers. This prototype shows how a Director would see the status of their center's enrollments as well as do projections for upcoming months/quarters.

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You can view/test the prototype here:

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Finished editing Julia's new Video.

Playing around with a new style with Julia's new studio layout.

Let us know what you think and how we can improve it.
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Working on a design and layout for our Employee Handbook that Jake is currently putting together.

I've used a similar design from our brochure and included elements that I'm familiar with from my previous work experiences. I wanted to create a look that feels "fun:" and inviting to read as well as deliver the important information quickly and easily. This project may be translated into a website instead.

Designed 16+ pages that James and I are going to iron out in the next few weeks. Here are some samples:

NOTE: All verbiage are just made up, don't take it seriously.

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1. Website Update - Was getting anxious with the negative analytic reports for the past 2 weeks but this this week the trend went UP significantly most likely due to the optimization I did with the images.
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   Image detail: View here
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2. Current Project - Teacher App: keep working on Webflow Prototype
3. Other Projects:

• Parent App Support (messaging) - Clean up design on the Web App, add Classes on the current Teacher App

• Projections - Tiny Hoppers - due on Friday
• Julia's web request, tutorials - this Monday
• Booth Design - still playing with a 3D design… maybe next week
• Employee Guidebook - Initial design due Tuesday

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• Updated 4 of our current Free Trial Emails  using Hubspot’s Email template designer:

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I was able to contact 8 centers plus our 3 awesome support team as well as Julia and Jamie to conduct a survey on Teacher App features that we’re looking to upgrade.

Here’s the Full Results:

• I was able to interview over the phone 2 directors: Anshu Chopra & Eileen Ramos. Recordings will be available once I’ve uploaded them.
• Did research on a few of the top competitors who are focusing on parent Communication and Daily Logs:

• HiMama - I did a n undercover live demo with one of their customer support (Video recording to be uploaded later)
• Kaymbu
• Tadpoles - Scheduled a demo next week
• Brightwheel
  

• My focus for the redesign will primarily be on Activity Logging and Parent Communication and geared towards a Tablet view based on the survey.
• I’ve already started mocking up a prototype through Webflow and it’s been looking pretty good. Here’s a small preview:

Redesigned Parent Communication in the Web App to support Parent App Messaging.

Check out the Prototype here:

https://www.figma.com/proto/D985674ewYvytMVxBdAc6TIo/Messaging-Feature?node-id=0%3A255&scaling=min-zoom

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• Broke down some numbers on the site to figure out why our Free Trials are decreasing since the Tab update
• Issue is primarily because of the speed due to the size of the Tabbed Demo. Will speak to Rob and Harry about this next week.

• Ran some analytics on our current website to see if the new Tabs feature on our home page was landing any conversions, so far based on the goals I’ve set it’s converting 10% of thhose who click at least one of the tabs. Pretty low but still a small sample. I will do some tests again for this week on Monday.
• Overall the site is trending on the right direction compared to 3 months ago. Conversion is now on par with the average marketing sites (2.5%), Bounce rate is lower, and both Page durations and Sessions/page are higher

• Working on a design for a 10x20 and 10x10 booth using SketchUp but still needed some training so I just started with some mood boards and illustrations

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• Finished Julia’s Open House video - This one is by far my most “funnest” and challenging one with all the pop up animatins and information in it. I had to trim it down from 15mins to 6.5 mins, whoa!

• This week I focused on getting out the Teacher App survey to get some input from some of our trusted and reliable customers who are either teachers, directors, as well as some who are using a different software in their classrooms.
• The results are still pretty close since there were only 7 out of 10 recipients who got back to me. However the comments were all inline with what we’re looking to do - Improve the Activity tracking of our Teacher App
• Setup some calls to 3 users next week to get more information and ask them specific user flow questions
• Met with Steven last Tuesday to discuss the survey as well as pickup some important updates
• Started creating User personas with our volunteers as well as narrating User Stories for the app
• I’ve now started wire-framing a new version of the teacher app, I’ll start fleshing it out next week.

• Website Updates (Pls see separate post for this week below)
  

• Unsubscribe Page for notifications: https://sb-unsubscribe.webflow.io/
  

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Curriculum

We’ve discussed Curriculum foundations and a suggested plan from my research and interviews. Since the Curriculum will rely heavily on product that is in the hands of our main users - Teachers - we decided to shift our focus on updating the Teacher App and the Activity Log process in particular.

Interviews:

Julia Erman (Director’s perspective)- Monday, Jan 7

Jamie Kryzyk (LifeCubby - Sales Perspective)- Wednesday Jan 9

Rosette Espenida (Lullaboo - ECE perspective using iCare) Wednesday Jan 9

Research Presentation:

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PRIORITY

This next three weeks, my focus is to rethink and redesign the Teacher App and have a working Prototype with particular userflows that we can present both to Developers as well as certain users for review.

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• Added Social Share buttons to the Blogs section for Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn.

• Updated section links to images on the Homepage
• TODO: Still need to optimize site to enhance speed (priority: reduce images suggested by Google Analytics)
• Need to Add API on Web App to push trial registrations to Hubspot

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• Based on our heat-map analytics, most of our new visitors have been clicking our hero image to see what's on our tabs. Those who click 2x are most likely to just leave the site out of frustration or not getting the info right away so we decided to change our Hero section form a static image to an actual interactive version of our Web App that highlights certain features. Go ahead and test them for yourself!

• We're running analytics on this site for a week or 2 to see if people will convert more with this new demo

• Added a few animations on the header page to make our selling feature " Made Easy" pop a bit as well as the interactive demo

• Focusing on researching a new project involving CURRICULUMS and integrating it with our Teacher & Web App
• Spent a few days researching and learning from online documentations, videos and other materials available online
• Scheduled interviews with: Julia, Jamie, Vanessa and 2 ECE teachers in the next 2 weeks
• Here’s some resources that I’ve gathered so far:

• http://www.the-preschool-professor.com/preschool-curriculum.html
• http://drisbell.com/keynotes/
• https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/atkinson/UserFiles/File/Resources_Topics/Resources_Topics_CurriculumPedagogy/Review_of_Early_Learning_Frameworks_in_Canada-all.pdf
• https://www.naeyc.org/sites/default/files/globally-shared/downloads/PDFs/resources/position-statements/position_statement.pdf
• https://www.mass.gov/eec-learning-standards-and-curriculum-guidelines
• https://www2.gnb.ca/content/gnb/en/departments/education/elcc/content/curriculum/learn.html
• https://www.thoughtco.com/curriculum-design-definition-4154176
  

Sample Curriculums (From Julia):

• https://www.lwtears.com/
• https://zoo-phonics.com/
• https://www.touchmath.com/
  

Information from Competitors:

• https://www.himama.com/childcare/frameworks
• http://help.mybrightwheel.com/using-brightwheel/learning-and-observations/state-standards

Reference Videos:

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My personal notes:

• Added Julia's Contact Form
• Changed Fonts on License Agreement Page
• Fixed Blog Issues: Next item sorting, size of layer on mobile view
• Templates updated to enable landscape downloads
• Home page's feature section (Childcare management, Parent Billing, Parent Engagement) now allows you to click on each of the 3 features with corresponding graphics and lightboxes.
• Website Login Link now gives an option for both Center Login & Parent Portal Login

RECAP

• Presented design.runsandbox.com
• Discussed video posts by Julia & editing work (Fridays)
• Product Road Map discussion - to meet with Steven on Thursday
• Opened new dialogue about Curriculum & Assessment 

TAKEAWAYS

• Work on adding new graphics for each Feature on the Home Page
• Facebook ad graphics with 3 Main Features
• Continue consolidating designs on the new design.runsandbox.com
• Meet with Steve about Product Road Map
• Edit Julia new Video
• Start researching Childcare Curriculum

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The purpose of this site to centralize all design assets, process and projects so that it is easily accessible to anyone on the team. All items here are downloadable or will connect directly to a downloaded file or interactive prototype. It will also include all research and data materials as well as links to analytic softwares.

It is broken down to 6 categories:

1. Design Identity: this is the company's full branding identity - Logo, fonts, graphics, etc.

2. Website - All assets and updates to Sandbox Software's website will be documented here as well as all analytic links.

3. Web App - This is part of the product group and will deal with all assets and projects involving the Web App.

4. Teacher App

5. Parent App

6. Marketing - All materials involving marketing will be stored and documented here.

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This site will be updated every Tuesday following a general UI/UX meeting and on Friday afternoon to document all project accomplishments, design milestones and changes throughout the of the week.