What is the Drawing Board?
There are currently 1,500 teaching staff at Western Sydney University, with a diverse range of teaching practices and methodologies. The Drawing Board is a planning tool that is being developed to support them by allowing them to visually map out their lessons with activities, share their lessons with coworkers, and export their work as usable lesson plans.
Project background and research
Our team consisted of two UX designers, two developers and two learning science analysts. To kick off the project we discussed the feasibility of planning tools with a group of 4 academics.
They revealed that currently lesson plans are made in text documents, with final lesson plans potentially quite long and detailed.
This can hamper iterative and collaborative efforts
Some academics noted that they sometimes use visual tools such as whiteboard, post-its, and butchers paper when they want to visually plan our their lessons
Academics responded positively to the idea of a “visual style” planner that can support this process
A common issue that academics were running into is that “we sometimes do not know how tutors are teaching our content”
This implied that a collaborative aspect of the tool could assist - allowing tutors to discuss any necessary changes with the subject coordinator
From team discussions after the initial focus group, the goal was to create a simple tool that was suitable for teaching staff at all levels, while still incorporating learning frameworks and features relevant to teaching practices.
Focus group feedback
We provided a prototype of our original concept to a focus group of 5 academics. The task was to add an activity to the board. While all users were able to complete the task, I noted that there was some initial confusion when they were presented with the UI.
A few participants noted that they weren’t sure where to look at first
One participant commented that once the board starts to fill up, it might begin to look too busy.
Early designs and further testing
Testing and feedback
The next set of designs were presented in another session with 3 participants, all of whom were involved from the previous round of testing. This time, users had 3 tasks to complete:
Create an activity
Create a group for the activities
Find the comment left on one of the activities
The updated design received immediate positive feedback when presented
Noted that it felt less cluttered, and that it was easier to look for different activities to add
While they didn’t seem to have trouble using the “group” feature, 2 of the participants had reservations about its functionality
Some groups could house a huge number of activities - the limited view may be difficult to navigate in these cases
“Normally if we were to create a sequence of activities we would try to tie it a learning objective”
The comment system was received positively, with no perceived issues in its use.
Final Designs
Final Designs
Reflections
The Drawing Board stands as one of the longest running projects that I have been a part of: starting in 2022 and still in development as of 2025, with many iterations created in that timeframe.
One of the most intriguing lessons learnt throughout this project was the idea of “simplicity” - in our initial internal discussions, it felt like we were moving towards a feature rich tool that could service a number of situations. However, through focus groups and testing of the user base, it became clear to me that simple features would have a better chance of capturing the broad needs of all academic staff while being simple enough that any one can pick it up.
The Drawing Board
The Drawing Board
The Drawing Board
Assisting teaching staff to visualise, iterate and collaborate on lesson plans.
Assisting teaching staff to visualise, iterate and collaborate on lesson plans.
Assisting teaching staff to visualise, iterate and collaborate on lesson plans.
Areas:
Areas:
Areas:
Research/ Prototyping/ Testing / UX + UI design
Research/ Prototyping / Testing / UX + UI design
Research / Prototyping / Testing / UX + UI design
Resume
What is the Drawing Board?
There are currently 1,500 teaching staff at Western Sydney University, with a diverse range of teaching practices and methodologies. The Drawing Board is a planning tool that is being developed to support them by allowing them to visually map out their lessons with activities, share their lessons with coworkers, and export their work as usable lesson plans.
Project background and research
Our team consisted of two UX designers, two developers and two learning science analysts. To kick off the project we discussed the feasibility of planning tools with a group of 4 academics.
They revealed that currently lesson plans are made in text documents, with final lesson plans potentially quite long and detailed.
This can hamper iterative and collaborative efforts
Some academics noted that they sometimes use visual tools such as whiteboard, post-its, and butchers paper when they want to visually plan our their lessons
Academics responded positively to the idea of a “visual style” planner that can support this process
A common issue that academics were running into is that “we sometimes do not know how tutors are teaching our content”
This implied that a collaborative aspect of the tool could assist - allowing tutors to discuss any necessary changes with the subject coordinator
From team discussions after the initial focus group, the goal was to create a simple tool that was suitable for teaching staff at all levels, while still incorporating learning frameworks and features relevant to teaching practices.
Focus group feedback
We provided a prototype of our original concept to a focus group of 5 academics. The task was to add an activity to the board. While all users were able to complete the task, I noted that there was some initial confusion when they were presented with the UI.
A few participants noted that they weren’t sure where to look at first
One participant commented that once the board starts to fill up, it might begin to look too busy.
Early designs and further testing
Testing and feedback
The next set of designs were presented in another session with 3 participants, all of whom were involved from the previous round of testing. This time, users had 3 tasks to complete:
Create an activity
Create a group for the activities
Find a view the comment left on one of the activities
The updated design received immediate positive feedback when presented
Noted that it felt less cluttered, and that it was easier to look for different activities to add
While they didn’t seem to have trouble using the “group” feature, 2 of the participants had reservations about its functionality
Some groups could house a huge number of activities - the limited view may be difficult to navigate in these cases
“Normally if we were to create a sequence of activities we would try to tie it a learning objective”
The comment system was received positively, with no perceived issues in its use.
Final Designs
Reflections
The Drawing Board stands as one of the longest running projects that I have been a part of: starting in 2022 and still in development as of 2025, with many iterations created in that timeframe.
One of the most intriguing lessons learnt throughout this project was the idea of “simplicity” - in our initial internal discussions, it felt like we were moving towards a feature rich tool that could service a number of situations. However, through focus groups and testing of the user base, it became clear to me that simple features would have a better chance of capturing the broad needs of all academic staff while being simple enough that any one can pick it up.
Refquest
Game Design / Testing / UX + UI design
An award winning learning experience that teaches through gamification.
Next project:
Refquest
Game Design / Testing / UX + UI design
An award winning learning experience that teaches through gamification.
Next project:
Refquest
Game Design / Testing / UX + UI design
An award winning learning experience that teaches through gamification.
Next project:
