Waterford Early Learning


 

Waterford Early Learning is an adaptive computer-based learning program originally intended for kindergarten to 2nd-grade students in a school setting. With a comprehensive curriculum of English language arts, mathematics, and science — known as Early Reading and Early Math & Science — each of the three levels takes a full school year to complete. The program consists of 500+ lessons, 7,000+ activities, 360 books, 330 songs, and includes take-home books, music CDs, sing-along and activity DVDs, and teacher guides.

Roles: Creative Director · Producer

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 

Design + Production Notes

I joined Waterford Institute in the role of Art Director in the middle of the development of the math and science component of the Waterford Early Learning program. Since the eclectic art style had been previously established, I focused on improving quality and consistency, updating production tools, revamping processes and procedures, and introducing on-going training opportunities. As I later took on the Creative Director role — overseeing all the media and design departments while also establishing a User Experience Design Department — my focus expanded to building a strong team commitment to quality and product engagement.

In our new process, we began prototyping and user testing our activities — utilizing rapid iteration techniques — before moving into production.

Our new UX Designers led this effort, with the intent that each activity would not only be highly interactive and engaging throughout, but would properly teach each activity’s educational objectives.

Once production was completed on all math and science activities, and a new set of phonological awareness activities developed for the reading component, we repackaged portions of the product to serve other markets: Rusty & Rosy Reading for home use and Play & Grow English for the international market. We also developed 29 new lesson modules to create our Waterford Early Learning Interactive Whiteboard Lessons product for whole-class instruction. I’m very pleased to know that hundreds of thousands of children around the world learn from these products each year.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

All media © Waterford Institute.