An onboarding platform for the AI dětem lecturer community that brings together key information, processes and support for onboarding and everyday work.
The initiative AI dětem, z. s. is a nonprofit organization that develops knowledge and skills in the field of artificial intelligence at primary and secondary schools.
It fulfills its mission through educational materials and a network of lecturers who operate across the country. The lecturer community has been growing since September 2023 and consists of teachers, students, beginner lecturers and AI enthusiasts with different levels of experience and digital skills.
As the community grew, there was a need to unify processes, improve orientation and systematically support the onboarding of new lecturers.
The goal of the project was to create a functional onboarding platform that would serve as the main information channel and a clear source of all processes related to working with AI dětem.
As the lecturer community grew, specific operational and organizational challenges began to appear. These affected both the quality of onboarding and everyday collaboration. Before designing a solution, it was necessary to clearly define these challenges.
Operational Reality:
Organizational Constraints:
The goal was to create a functional online hub and onboarding platform for lecturers that would unify information, simplify processes and improve the quality of training.
Key Outcomes:
At AI dětem, I work part-time as Head of Product Portfolio. I am responsible for lecturer support, process design and creating structured content for training programs.
The project was built on a combination of research, design methods and iterative testing. The goal was to design a solution that would be practical, understandable and sustainable in the long term.
I focused on interviews and lecturer experience from other educational organizations. The main focus was on properly mapping all processes, enabling quick orientation and making sure users always know what to do and how to proceed.
The project was significantly influenced by the technological environment and organizational setup. The design had to take the following dependencies and constraints into account.
As the lecturer community grew, uncertainties in processes and information sharing began to appear. Lecturers lacked one central place where they could find clearly defined procedures, context and up-to-date information.
How can we design an onboarding platform that unifies processes, provides clear context and helps lecturers quickly find their way without the need for repeated questions?
The ideation process took place gradually over two months. It included process mapping with the internal team in Miro, interviews, and feedback from lecturers during online meetings and via email.
I used a trial-and-error approach and explored different solutions. Gradually, emails, checklists, videos recorded in Loom and even a comic were created.
Based on the feedback, I arrived at the idea of creating a training platform in Google Classroom or a web hub built on Google Sites.
After the ideation phase, it was necessary to choose a solution that would be realistic, quick to implement and at the same time help the organization set up processes in the long term.
The decision was based on two key criteria.
Decision Criteria:
Two options were considered:
A sketch of a web hub on Google Sites was created. Interviews were conducted with the internal team and lecturers. It was confirmed that, at this stage, a clear and well-structured hub made more sense than a large training course.
During sketch testing, it became clear that users could not imagine how the platform would work because they did not know all the processes. I therefore decided to create a high-fidelity integration prototype, which was suitable for testing all parts of the platform – layout, text, process descriptions and workflows.
Another reason was that while working on the prototype, I was also able to document procedures, build the overall training process and implement it directly in practice.
The research was conducted to better understand the needs of lecturers and to map the current processes within the organization.
The research included team brainstorming in Miro, online interviews and feedback collection via email and Slack.
I focused on identifying differences in digital skills, analyzing existing materials and processes, and understanding lecturers’ expectations of the onboarding platform. This also included testing early concepts and collecting specific feedback on their clarity and usability.
This was the most demanding phase. I had to analyze existing processes, propose adjustments and test them in the prototype before the training was implemented.
I created a structure on Google Drive so the prototype could work with real documents, and I set up Google accounts for lecturers so they could access the prototype.
The organization originally had no cloud environment, so I implemented Google Workspace for Nonprofits in the free version. During the project, I worked with the paid Business Standard version.
Lecturers needed permanent access to Google Workspace and their own email addresses. I decided to create a high-fidelity prototype that also served as a real platform for training coordination.
During the design process, several forms of prototypes were created to gradually test the clarity of processes and the platform navigation.
The following were created:
Each of these outputs had a different purpose – from quickly testing the structure to testing the real functioning of the entire platform.
The goal was to verify the functionality of the prototype in a real environment and gather specific feedback from lecturers and the administrative team.
Testing was conducted on an interactive prototype with access via Google accounts.
Testing Process
The results were documented in Notion and Google Sheets.
The testing revealed several important areas that needed to be adjusted before the final implementation.
During the project, I became deeply involved in the processes and, while creating the prototype, I focused on them more than on the GUI. The visual design of the website became secondary because I concentrated mainly on the content.
I found that having a central hub significantly helps lecturers and makes sense to continue developing. Through prototyping, I gained a better understanding of internal processes and confirmed that it is important to see things with perspective and distance.
