Designing a bridge for speech therapists and students

What a does a student, a teacher, a therapist, and a school administrator have in common? That was the design problem we sought to solve with MySkyBridge. Myskybridge needed to implement a technology solution for public, private, and charter schools that overcame hardware and bandwidth limitations. It also needed to be effortless to use and harness a design language that worked for a diverse set of users with varying backgrounds, abilities, and accessibility requirements. The interface needed to get out of the way and put the speech therapy session front and center.

Scope
  • Branding & Identity
  • Interface Design
  • Marketing Program
  • Frontend Development
  • Rails Development
  • Research & User Testing

The Approach

Myskybridge was built in rails, is HIPPA compliant, and was an early adopter of WebRTC video chat. We designed an educational platform that is easy to use with a full set of educational features like integrated lesson plans, scheduling, progress reports, and met government mandated reporting requirements. It's as simple as logging in, meeting with students, sharing lessons and creating customized learning programs.

The Build

During a therapy sessions, students primarily focus on the instructions from the therapist. Our experience design research indicated that students have a hyper-focus on the therapist’s physical motion. Likewise, therapists needed the ability to easily communicate with both the student and the student's support team which included teachers, school administrators and parents. While conducting a therapy session, the therapist needed to clearly observe the student's mouth, hear detailed pronunciations, follow the student's eye movements, and be able to read their expressions and demeanor.

We drew a big red circle around the video conferencing requirements. It had to be good, with no plugins to manage. These kids are technologically advanced and deserve next generation learning tools.

Balancing a brand

Through our research, we gained a deep understanding of the needs of the students, teachers and therapists. While a “bridge” was an easy metaphor and icon on its own. Distilling the bridge into something simple enough for younger students to identify while also being “not just for kids”.

The brand is confident in its technology, distinguishable from other app icons, and mature enough for school administators and potential 3rd party clients and integrations.

Connecting the experiences

Myskybridge is about real human connections between students and teachers, therapists and parents.

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