Increase Student Usage by Improving Career Readiness Discoverability

The Career Center helps students connect literacy growth to future career goals by linking Lexile progress to the reading demands of different career paths. Through personalized, real-world texts, Achieve3000 accelerates reading comprehension and helps students build the literacy skills needed for college and career success.

EdTechUX/UI DesignWEB

Company
McGraw Hill Education

Duration
4 Months

My Role
UX Design, Visual Design, Accessibility, Interaction Design, Prototype

Product
Achieve3000 is an online literacy platform that helps K–12 students improve reading and writing skills through personalized articles and activities tailored to each student’s reading level. Teachers use it to support instruction, track progress, and help students build comprehension, vocabulary, and critical thinking skills.

The Challenge

A3K’s College and Career Readiness features provide valuable student insights, but low discoverability. Limited integration into instruction reduce teacher adoption. Resulting in students missing opportunities to connect literacy growth to their career goals.

Goals

  • Increase teacher usage
  • Increase student engagement and completion

Anti-goal: Disrupt assigned work or unintentionally limit motivation when a target Lexile level is reached.

Discovery: Current State & Competitive Analysis

I began by auditing existing teacher and student user flows related to Career Readiness features (RIASEC assessment, career goal selection, insights reporting).

Key findings:

  • Low teacher visibility into student career goals and RIASEC completion.

  • Unclear student expectations about what tasks were required and why they mattered.

  • Career features were disconnected from daily workflows, reducing relevance and completion rates.

A competitive analysis of other learning platforms revealed a strong emphasis on:

  • Clear goal-setting frameworks

  • Progress tracking dashboards

  • Embedded goal alignment within assignments

Discovery: User Flow Improvements

Based on identified friction points, I created streamlined ideal user flows for teachers and students centered on three priorities:

  1. Enhancing Awareness – Surface incomplete RIASEC assessments and career goals through clear, dismissible dashboard alerts.

  2. Applied Integration – Embed Career Readiness tasks directly into assignment workflows, allowing teachers to assign RIASEC and career selection with due dates.

  3. Highlighting Progress – Make career goals, RIASEC results, Lexile performance, and assignment alignment visible to support accountability and motivation.

These flows ensured Career Readiness features were visible, actionable, and integrated into everyday teaching and learning experiences.

Discovery: Use Cases

This initiative supported teachers in gaining actionable visibility into student RIASEC completion, career goals, and Lexile growth to better inform instruction and assignment planning. Teachers can assign career-related tasks, group students by results or interests, monitor completion, and compare academic performance against career targets.

Students receive clear guidance and accountability through dashboard alerts and assigned tasks, understand how career exploration connects to their learning progression, and can track goals, results, and career-aligned content within their everyday workflow.

Use cases were iterated based on stakeholder feedback to ensure alignment with project goals.

Define: Low-fi Wireframes

I translated the ideal user flows into low-fidelity wireframes for two key surfaces:

Teacher Dashboard

  • Class-level visibility of RIASEC and career goal completion

  • Assign career-based tasks and group students by results

  • Compare Lexile growth to career targets

Student Experience

  • Prominent Career Readiness section with progress tracking

  • Alerts for incomplete tasks

  • Career tasks integrated into assignments for actionable completion

Wireframes were iterated based on stakeholder feedback to ensure alignment with use cases and workflows.

Hi-Fi Designs

With alignment on structure, I created high-fidelity designs that:

  • Maintained consistency with the existing design system

  • Enhanced accessibility, including accessible graph patterns and compliant interaction states

  • Included detailed annotations for engineering handoff

Final designs were reviewed with engineering, accessibility, product, and UX leadership.

CCR Hi-Fi designs

Results

This work is currently in development and has not yet been released.

This initiative transforms Career Readiness from a siloed feature into an integrated, goal-driven experience by increasing teacher visibility, clarifying student expectations, and embedding accountability into everyday workflows. It connects academic growth (Lexile performance) to future career goals, making progress measurable and instruction more purposeful.