Tech Rocket is the premiere STEAM educational platform for kids! From Photoshop to Python, the Tech Rocket curriculum provides kid-friendly explanations of complex concepts having to do with game design, programming, and digital art, packaged in a beautiful interactive environment.
As the spiritual successor to iD Tech 365 (iD Tech's previous year-round online educational tool) my task was threefold: first, to give iD Tech 365 a complete UX overhaul in preparation for its relaunch as Tech Rocket. Second, establish a curriculum rollout plan, including new brand identity standards for content development. Third, to staff and lead the Tech Rocket Curriculum Development team towards a successful launch containing courses in nine separate technologies.
In order to ensure that the curriculum content informed the user experience, I began with an analysis of iD Tech 365's previous curriculum, examining course content volume vs. user metrics. Subsequently, the curriculum for Tech Rocket was pared down to 9 technologies - those with the highest levels of engagement, with a few exceptions for technologies that we expected would become hugely popular. Simultaneous to curriculum analysis, I performed and in-depth exploration of the top 10 public facing interactive educational platforms for adults, and a separate analysis on educational tools for children. At the end of the research phase, I then presented my findings to iD Tech, including all preliminary UX wireframes and content suggestions, as well as recommending a developmental partnership with educational platform Code School. Once the direction of the product and initial timeline had been established, I laid out the initial content development pipeline. Then, I assisted in the staffing and training of the content development team, including all standardization guidelines, QA procedures, mentoring, and a week long training exercise for our new hires. Finally, I designed and produced three courses for the initial content development rollout, including Tech Rocket's two flagship courses - Minecraft Modding with Javascript, and Java, including all art and code assets, user challenges, and test suites.
Tech Rocket launched successfully in August of 2015, and is now the premiere online educational resource for kids who are passionate about STEAM. It should be noted that the Tech Rocket team is a truly outstanding and wonderful group of people. I am proud to have been able to build such a beautiful product with such talented individuals.