The Brief
- I-LABS had spent years translating cutting-edge research on the power of bilingualism in early childhood into a proven curriculum for children ages 0–5.
- Their first digital pilot lived in WordPress with a learning plug-in: it was hard to navigate, visually dated, and not flexible enough to support growth, multiple age tracks, or a mix of English and Spanish.
- The long-term vision was to license SparkLing to large childcare organizations and use the revenue to fund further research. However, the existing product wasn’t robust or user-friendly enough for that kind of scale.
Our Scope
Substantial was asked to:
- Understand the real-world needs, constraints, and workflows of early childhood bilingual teachers using or piloting SparkLing.
- Recommend the right product architecture (LMS, CMS, or hybrid) to support scale, multi-language content, and future features like a community of practice.
- Redesign the end-to-end teacher experience (from training dashboard through lesson plans) so it felt intuitive, engaging, and respectful of teachers’ expertise.
- Build (and later evolve) a platform that I-LABS’ non-technical team could update themselves, without relying on developers for content change.
Our Approach
We combined deep teacher research, UX, and a scalable technical foundation to rebuild SparkLing around classroom experiences.
1. Immersed in SparkLing’s world and teachers’ realities
- Conducted a 5-week discovery sprint: immersed in existing curriculum, research, and the original prototype; mapped the full user journey from marketing site through certification and lesson plans.
- Interviewed 12 bilingual early childhood educators across multiple states to understand their context, tech comfort, and day-to-day classroom realities. Many were self-taught bilingual teachers juggling limited prep time, family buy-in, and mixed-language classrooms.
- Identified key contextual needs:
- Training and lesson plans must live in both English and Spanish, with fluid switching.
- Materials must be printable, since many centers don’t allow tablets in classrooms (kids get overstimulated by screens).
- Family engagement and communication need to be considered from day one.
2. Defined design principles that honor teachers and the science
- Ran a collaborative workshop with I-LABS to distill four design principles that would anchor every UX decision:
- Meet teachers where they are: across tech skills, teaching styles, and classroom realities.
- Activate a desire to learn: use visuals, audio, and interaction to keep training energizing, not tedious.
- Respect lived experience: treat teachers as experts, not novices needing “fixing.”
- Inspire confidence in the research: make the science credible and clear in both content and visual design.
- Used these principles to guide mood boards and a new visual direction to balance professional polish with the playful feel of early childhood classrooms.
3. Reimagined the end-to-end teacher experience
- Designed wireframes for the key touchpoints: dashboard, program/track overview, training detail pages, interactive activities, and lesson plan tools.
- Introduced a two-pane training layout with main content + collapsible side navigation, so that the experience felt familiar and easy to scan, mirroring other online trainings teachers had taken. Teachers immediately recognized the pattern and reported feeling more comfortable.
- Simplified and clarified navigation and progress:
- Clear labels for certification progress vs. concept/unit progress.
- Visual cues to highlight “where I am right now” and what’s next.
- Designed a mix of text, video, and audio activities (including accessible matching and click-to-reveal formats) with options for captioning and language toggling, so teachers could learn in the way that best fit their style and environment.
- Built lesson-plan views that show the full year and week at a glance, plus light customization (like swapping activities) so teachers can adapt plans while staying within the research-backed framework.
4. Architected a platform that’s scalable and teacher-friendly
- Conducted a technical investigation into multiple LMS and CMS options, evaluating each for feature fit, cost, multi-language support, accessibility, and reporting.
- Ruled out “out-of-the-box” LMS options that would have locked SparkLing into clunky UIs, limited customization, and high per-learner fees with little UX control.
- Recommended a hybrid architecture:
- Use a modern LMS with an API to handle user management, course progress, and reporting.
- Pair it with a flexible CMS to manage bilingual content, lesson plans, and marketing pages, and power a custom front-end that delivers the UX teachers actually need.
- Implemented a CMS that I-LABS staff can safely edit themselves, without requiring code, so they can refine content based on ongoing research, teacher feedback, and pilot results.
The Results
While SparkLing’s scaled rollout continues, the collaboration has already delivered outcomes:
- SparkLing is now a cohesive digital product with an experience designed specifically for bilingual early childhood educators.
- In research sessions, teachers consistently said the new flow felt clear, familiar, and genuinely useful, and many expressed strong interest in taking the full certification themselves.
- The team has already been able to substantially revise and shorten training content on their own after piloting it with teachers, using the CMS without fear of “breaking” the system.
- The platform supports separate tracks for ages 0–3 and 3–5, bilingual content, and richer reporting. This positions SparkLing to be potentially be adopted by large childcare organizations and to measure its impact on language comprehension over time.
