[CLOSED] FC-0011 - Mobile Product Strategy/Backlog Development

Owned by Michelle Philbrick
Last updated: Sept 11, 2023
4 min read

 

 

Funded Project ID

FC-0011

Provider

Marco Morales, LLC

Axim Contact(s)

Ed Zarecor

Expected Completion Date

July 2023 (originally April - extended project in calendar time, even if not scope)

Status

Complete

Additional Project Details

This project aims to develop and present a mobile strategy for the Open edX project that aligns with Axim's mission of providing a teaching and learning platform that is accessible globally, even in limited bandwidth environments.

GitHub

 

Overview

This project aims to develop and present a mobile strategy for the Open edX project that aligns with Axim's mission of providing a teaching and learning platform that is accessible globally, even in limited bandwidth environments. To ground the strategy in learner expectations and patterns from other top educational applications, a survey of the mobile landscape will be conducted.

To support this project, meetings, and discussions with Open edX ecosystem team members will be scheduled, and an open call for interested parties to contribute will also be incorporated. The strategy proposal will be organized in terms of Product, Design, and Technology components to facilitate engagement in specific areas of interest.

Project Team

  • Community Lead - @Marco Morales

  • Axim Lead - @Edward Zarecor

  • Raccoon Gang Lead - @Volodymyr Chekyrta

  • Supporting - @Colin Brash , @Poornima Hanumara (Deactivated) , (and others to be added soon!)

  • Following - See watch list on this Confluence page!

Key Goals / Outcomes

  1. Product: Deliver a mobile strategy and product roadmap to support investment focus areas over the next two years. This includes:

    1. Gathering input on a mobile product roadmap/strategic focus areas from the community to create a clear community roadmap for mobile.

    2. Reviewing and assessing existing discovery efforts from 2U, Raccoon Gang, and elsewhere regarding mobile app improvements to integrate into the proposal.

  2. Technology: Recommend next steps for technology investment to support accelerated Open edX mobile development speed and increased contributions. This includes:

    1. Assessing the benefits and impact of moving to brand new mobile code bases that leverage MVVM architecture patterns, based on a proof of concept effort underway by Raccoon Gang.

    2. Specifying feature gaps and the level of development effort required to close feature gaps between the newly architected mobile repositories and the existing codebase to assess feasibility and investment level.

    3. Evaluating a sequencing plan for development that can support the potential migration of existing users to a new codebase.

  3. Design: Identify experience gaps between the existing Open edX mobile applications and industry leaders in both education and related non-education applications to identify key experience investments. This includes:

    1. Reviewing several key app exemplars that support high-quality and offline learning experiences for students, and documenting findings for the community.

    2. Identifying key themes and opportunities that should be considered as part of experience improvements to the applications.

    3. Gathering existing design discovery and recommending investment/sequencing based on expected impact to a global audience of learners.

 

Current Status and Next Steps (against Goals / Outcomes)

Where applicable, we will link to other pages once they are added to the Product space for each of the goal areas below.

0 Project

Project Overview / Tracking / Docs / Meetings.

COMPLETED

  • Shifted to PRoduct Subgroup: Mobile structure for weekly meetings -DONE

  • Initial Meetings Pre-Conference Schedules and on FC-0011 calendar shared via Slack - DONE

  • Recurring Meetings to be scheduled post-conference - DONE

Future Tasks

  • Draft OEP to reflect mobile technology repository shift proposal with plans for migration

1 Product

1a Roadmap Input / Review

COMPLETEd

  • @Poornima Hanumara (Deactivated) / 2U to provide visibility into existing team roadmap

 

1b Discovery Effort Review

COMPLETED

  • Continued discovery from community mobile wo

  • rking group team (linked from Roadmap page)

  • Discovery

  • @Poornima Hanumara (Deactivated) / 2U to provide visibility into existing discovery efforts

  • [To Consider] Exploration of the role of AI and opportunities for leveraging this in the Open edX mobile strategy

2 Technology

2a Evaluate New Code Bases

Outcome: We are planning to propose a shift to using the new Raccoon Gang authored mobile applications as the default iOS + Android experiences to support faster development, community engagement. The path to this transition / migration away from the current applications is still unknown, so no timeline exists for this and we are still ensuring we provide ample time for community input and review.

REVIEWED

  • - REVIEWED

  • Repository - Licensing Review / Confirmation - REVIEWED

 

2b Feature Gaps and Effort

IN PROGRESS

  • - IN PROGRESS

  • - IN PROGRESS

 

2c Sequencing / Migration

IN PROGRESS

  • Development Scope + Sizing for Feature Parity - IN PROGRESS

  • Migration Path / Conversion (Milestones / Process) - NOT YET STARTED

3 Design

3a App Exemplars

MARKED COMPLETE- Not all app discovery documented in confluence

  • - IN PROGRESS

    • Coursera, Duolingo - Completed

    • Khan Academy, Udemy, Codecademy - In Progress

    • (other apps to be listed)

  • - READY FOR REVIEW

  • - READY FOR REVIEW

  • - READY FOR REVIEW

 

3b Experience Themes

IN PROGRESS

- NOT YET DRAFTED

 

3c Sequencing / Impact

COMPLETED - Incorporated into sequencing of roadmap / prioritization

Project Meetings / Status Reviews

 

Action Items

@Volodymyr Chekyrta - to share timing of mobile conference talk in slack
@Poornima Hanumara (Deactivated) - to gather discovery / collateral for open edx mobile development to support clear comparisons + feature parity
@Marco Morales - to update discovery pages to reflect current status on main project page
@Marco Morales - to schedule dedicated time to discuss migration path / conversion.
@Team - review of the feature comparison page + @Marco Morales to schedule (optional) working session for this
@Volodymyr Chekyrta + @Marco Morales to draft confluence page with screenshots for app comparisons
@Poornima Hanumara (Deactivated) + @Colin Brash - existing 2u mobile roadmap sharing + details
@Marco Morales - to review the mobile versions and releases pages for updates