Urban Griot Playground
Making early education more engaging, accessible, and culturally meaningful for families through participatory research and product strategy.
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Urban Griot Playground is a learning kit and research project that uses rhythm, music, and movement to build early literacy and STEAM skills in 3- to 6-year-olds. Evolving from a family workshop into an at-home kit, it now blends hands-on and digital activities that boost children’s cognitive, social-emotional, and motor skills while nurturing cultural identity and family bonding.
👀 Overview
Duration:
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12 months
(May 2024 - Jun 2025)
Team:
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1 Product Owner
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1 Designer
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2 Developer
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1 Advisor
Methods:
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Stakeholder Interview
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Participatory Co-Desig
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Thematic Analysis
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Documentation & Synthesi
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Information Architecture
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Wireframing
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Visual Design
My Role:
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Lead UX Designer & Research Strategist
Platform:
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Physical learning kit + Digital companion app
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Ed-tech for kids
Users:
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Parents & children (ages 3-6)
🧐 Who is it for?
Target Users:
👉🏼 Parents & children (ages 3-6) in Black, Brown, Indigenous communities
Pain Points:
‼️ Need for culturally authentic educational content
👉🏼 Educators seeking culturally responsive STEM tools
‼️ Lack of clear instructions for complex activities
👉🏼 Community organizations supporting early childhood education
‼️ Limited time to learn new educational tools
📑 Context & Challenge:
Most early-learning tools are Western-centric and overlook embodied, communal ways of learning.
Urban Griot Playground (UGP) set out to change that with a learning kit rooted in African drumming traditions, teaching STEAM and literacy through rhythm, movement and play to children aged 3-6.
Before investing in costly family pilots, we had to know:
Could parents quickly grasp the kit and guide their children—or would confusion derail adoption?
The Stakes: Launching a confusing product would not only waste pilot families' time—it could damage trust in culturally responsive EdTech and set back the broader mission of inclusive early childhood education.
👩🏻💻 My Role & Impact
As the Lead UX Designer and Research Strategist, I:
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Led end-to-end research for product improvement (5 co-design sessions, 50+ participants)
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Designed & facilitated stakeholder engagement strategy
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Established standardized research process for the team to evaluate data
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Improved product efficiency and team workflow through scalable information architecture
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Created MVP for digital companion app
5
Co-design sessions with 40+ educators and design students
60%
Reduction in team decision-making confusion
85%→15%
Reduction in onboarding confusion
4
Major design and research process improvement
40%
Increase in pilot sign-ups after communication improvements
✓
Kit approved as pilot-ready by academic leadership
🎯 Where I Joined the Journey
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I joined UGP at pilot phase 2 -
The kit had been developed but needed comprehensive user testing before moving to family pilots. My role was to lead the validation research that would determine if the kit was ready for real-world testing.
🔎 Research Strategy
We framed this phase as expert-user validation—testing with design students, educators and researchers who could articulate friction fast, saving time, money and goodwill before family pilots.
🎯 Our Objectives:
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Validate core usability with expert users before involving families
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Surface & fix hidden barriers in onboarding, components and cultural context.
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Build scalable research and design processes for a growing team.
So, how do you make sure a learning kit is truly inclusive, joyful, and easy to use? You don't do it alone. You bring in the voices.
You Listen, you Test, and you Iterate.
🤔 HMW ensure kit components clearly communicate their educational purpose?
🤔 HMW create confident facilitators, not confused users?
🤔 HMW make cultural learning accessible to busy parents?
🤔 HMW validate product readiness before costly pilot investment?
🔎 Research Process:
Here’s our Research and Evaluation process at a glance that helped us identify critical barriers:
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5 Co-design workshops with educators, design students, and researchers
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Stakeholder mapping and needs assessment
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Usability testing through role-playing to evaluate different elements from the kit
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Thematic analysis of qualitative feedback
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Quantitative surveys for validation
1. Each co-design session focused on evaluating a particular aspect of the kit and to identify critical barriers
Facilitation Flow:
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Stakeholder-mapping ice-breaker
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Unguided kit exploration → live observation
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“Parent/child” role-play of activities
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Instant surveys + group debrief
2. Analyzing Data & Creating Supporting Material for Future Research
1. Analyzed qualitative and quantitative data from sessions and surveys by thematic analysis to evaluate the learning kit’s design and impact.
2. Created a comprehensive codebook with clear definitions and examples, enabling consistent, rigorous analysis across the research team.
3. Developed a theme count table to track recurring patterns, informing future co-design sessions and product improvements.
3. Prioritise & Recommend - Ranked issues by frequency × severity × feasibility
Identified 4 key blockers based on recurring themes
#1 Component Mystery
85% of participants couldn't understand rhythm tokens' educational purpose
"We loved the tactile feel, but it was just kind of confusing to us."
#2 Onboarding Overwhelm
Even education professionals felt lost without step-by-step guidance
"Without a walkthrough, I'd be lost. Step-by-step visuals would help."
#3 Progress Invisibility
No way to track learning progression or celebrate achievements
"The camp map is underutilized—just showing camps without tracking progress"
#4 Cultural Context Gap
Users appreciated cultural elements, but lacked context for explaining them
"A huge amount of history and culture is rooted in this practice… that is the most valuable thing to be teaching."
✨ Design Solutions:
Designed comprehensive solutions addressing each identified critical barrier
1. Comprehensive Onboarding System:
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Created a multi-touchpoint first-use experience with the QR code walkthrough video, quick-start guidance that leads to the digital companion platform.
QR code that leads to a walkthrough video
Result: Significantly improved initial comprehension and confidence
The walkthrough video opens on the digital companion platform
🥳 Successful Open House - 40% Increase in pilot sign up study
2. Token Integration Strategy:
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Tokens power every hands-on activity in the kit. To showcase their purpose—and bridge to the digital version—we built a guided sample activity that walks users through when, why, and how to use tokens, turning an abstract concept into an instantly clear learning tool.
Result: Transformed most confusing component into a the meaningful learning tool
3. Progress Celebration System:
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I transformed the camp map from a static poster into an interactive progress tracker by adding reusable stickers for completed activities, giving children sense of accomplishment
Result: Repurposed existing camp map for progress tracking functionality
4. Digital Companion MVP:
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I designed a companion app that mirrors physical learning kit: kids get interactive digital quests, parents scan a QR on each card to unlock quick how-to videos, track progress, and dive into bite-sized cultural context—all delivering a seamless bridge between the physical kit and digital support.
⚡️Process Innovation & Team Leadership
I contributed to laying a foundation for the design and research process, communicating the value of project and increasing team efficiency
Research Infrastructure:
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Reusable co-design process with clear facilitation guides—any teammate can run a workshop without reinventing the wheel.
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Central data-analysis pipeline plus codebook—feedback is tagged consistently, so insights remain comparable across studies.
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Documentation standards that speed onboarding and preserve institutional knowledge.
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Theme-tracking count table that surfaces recurring patterns instantly, accelerating decisions.
Team & Workflow Optimisation:
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Role-clarification workshop aligning responsibilities with each member’s strengths.
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Centralised information architecture that cut cross-team confusion by ≈60% with easy feature prioritization
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Created marketing collaterals, a presentation to communicate the value of the kit to target users - families and educators
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Incorporating user feedback and project context, I rebuilt the stakeholder map—grouping stakeholders by role and influence—to give the team a clear, prioritized view of who drives impact and how to engage them.
📈 Project Status:
The UGP Learning Kit remains part of an ongoing research initiative. Since my involvement in the early design phase, the project has continued to evolve through iterative refinement and strategic planning.
My work set the foundation for a clear process for
co-design sessions, data analysis, and research documentation that could be used for clear and measurable outcomes.
Building on this foundation, the UGP team is now focused on expanding partnerships with daycare centers and early learning providers to implement the kit in real-world settings and begin the formal research phase. It's also now taking steps towards becoming a startup.
🪞Conclusion & Personal Reflections:
What This Experience Means to Me:
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This project taught me the power of truly listening and co-creating with users, not just designing for them.
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I learned how to turn real feedback and cultural insight into hands-on changes that made a difference for families and kids.
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Leading through uncertainty and building systems from scratch gave me confidence and agility I’ll bring to any team.
My Biggest Lessons:
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Listening is everything. The most innovative solutions come when you let users lead.
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Flexibility matters—as much as planning. When priorities shifted, I adapted quickly and kept our goals in focus.
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True inclusion isn’t just a goal—it’s the difference between a product that works and a product that truly matters.
