AWARD:
Excellence in Digital Innovation (British Council)
COMPANY:
EF Education first
YEAR:
2022-2023
Role:
Product Designer
Context.
Hyper Class transports adult English learners into immersive virtual environments and collaborative live experiences to simulate real-life communication and build confidence with the use of language.
Designing a digital classroom that balances tool visibility and a clear teaching area on a single screen, without scrolling, is a challenge. It requires thoughtful prioritisation and organisation within limited space.
Teachers need a platform that simplifies content flow, interaction control, and student engagement. This also reduces training effort for the operational team.
Solution.
During the design process, it became clear the Classroom view had to include 3 key elements:
Focus on the content and content control
Horizontal video pods
Easy navigation
This approach ensures teachers can deliver structured, engaging lessons with minimal distractions.
After a few rounds of usability testing conducted to understand teachers’ behaviour, the final design was refined as follows:
Final Design:
Other explorations.
Initial design iterations emphasised a layout where all controls were visible. After reviewing various screen resolutions, the minimum screen size was set to 1280×720. Scene previews are positioned on the left, allowing seamless lesson navigation, while interaction controls at the bottom keep resources accessible without cluttering the main content.
The initial design explorations included floating video pods:
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Award.
Hyper Class won the British Council ELTon Award for Digital Innovation (2022)
