Polar Reference was a mobile and web application that changed the way free access to reference material was distributed and maintained for students and teachers. It gave everyone an equal opportunity to resources across the world.
Students across the world lacked a concise reference material platform, often forcing these students to use numerous websites, applications, and textbooks to find answers and solutions to questions they may have.
Equal education is something that is very dear to me and is a cause that I hope to always pursue in order to level the playing field for students around the world. I believe that primary and secondary schools in American and across the world inadequately prepare students for the life they will lead. This is because different kids from different socioeconomic backgrounds may not be afforded the same opportunities to learn. Polar Reference aimed to change that by bringing free factual resources to students across the world.
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Realizing that I wanted to make an impact in education, my first step was to understand what tools were currently available to students and where they lacked proper resources. This took me across a variety of resources like: Khan Academy, Wikipedia, Google search results, textbooks, Ask.com, Codecademy, and various others.
The problem with all of these resources is that the reference material a student is seeking is often buried in a lot of information that has to be filtered out. Most of the tools presented in-depth explanations about certain subjects, were not always factually reliable, or never actually presented the information the student was looking for.
Another big problem I discovered was the lack of aggregated reference material. For example, if a student is doing chemistry homework and is constantly having to query the atomic weight of elements, it would make sense to start aggregating these sets of data to reduce the time spent researching information.
02
After analyzing the tools available to students, it was time to find out if there was a valid market for an aggregated, factual reference platform. I started by asking students and teachers with academic backgrounds ranging from middle school to college how we could make a better classroom experience through technology. I worked with both students and teachers to help define areas in education that could use technology to enhance the learning experience.
By working with students and teachers, we identified 3 key subjects that could bring immediate impact to the students' educational experience. These subjects were math, chemistry, and English. It was at this moment that Polar Reference was born.
01
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Various takes on a potential navigation layout.
03
Various takes on a potential news feed layout.
04
Taking what already looks good, and breathing life into it.
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#10D468
Pine
#19C7DE
Sky
#7C19DE
Amethyst
#DE1937
Lava
#F5F7F9
Concrete
#000000
Obsidian
View the information heirarchy and the structure of Polar Reference with the high level tree view below.
01
I conducted A/B tests and user interviews to validate my design decisions with both students and teachers. A/B tests consisted of different variations of navigation and layout, whereas the user interviews focused on having the testers attempt to accomplish a specific task within the application. This research led to incremental changes within the design and helped solidify the informational hierarchy I had created.
Once I was satisfied with the design direction, it was time to introduce a color palette (which can be seen above) and bring the information to life. It was here that I had to research and understand the color association between different subjects. This, in turn, led math to become blue, science to became green, and English to become red.
From there I dove into development using Xcode 6 and swift. After spending countless hours setting constraints, building storyboards, and debugging code errors on Stackoverflow — I had a functioning product that I released to the world. Authentication and analytics were handled through Firebase and the core application was stored locally to allow users to access the content any time (aside from the news).
02
From the initial release, the app gained wide appreciation among my colleagues. A short month later Polar Reference was integrated into libraries, local schools, and educational tutoring centers across the Northwest Arkansas area. Fast forward one year from its initial release and Polar Reference had been downloaded in over 67 countries reaching some of the top charts for education and reference material in several countries.
03
Polar Reference eventually became an online resource covering even more topics. The technical debt from changing APIs and the consistent language updates to Swift made the application require a lot of upkeep. This subsequently led me to pull it from the market.