KATE
MONTERO
Educator & Creator
Faculty Resource Exchange (FRE)
A platform concept to help faculty discover, organize, and share instructional resources across higher education.
UX Research · UX Design · Interactive Prototyping
The problem:
Faculty discover valuable teaching resources every day, but lack a simple way to save, organize, and share those resources with colleagues in a trusted, curated environment.
The goal:
Create a lightweight Faculty Resource Exchange where instructors can discover, submit, and save trusted teaching resources, with an optional pathway for recommending resources to an institution’s existing resource repository.
Project type: UX design case study
My role: UX research and design
Tools: Figma
Research Journey: From Assumption to Insight
Research Insights: Rethinking the Problem
My original idea was to create a course companion app to help students keep track of their classes, assignments, and digital learning tools. Although students struggled to keep track of multiple digital tools, 53.6% identified the cost of required course materials as a challenge.
This shifted my focus from creating another student app to exploring how faculty could work together to identify and share free, open educational resources (OER)—helping students access the materials they need without the added financial burden.
A Collaborative Resource Ecosystem: Three connected components. One shared mission.
User Research: Pain Points
Faculty often search across publisher platforms, OER repositories, library resources, and departmental materials, making it difficult to quickly find relevant teaching resources in one place.
Faculty want affordable options for students but need confidence that free or low-cost resources are high quality, aligned with learning outcomes, and practical to adopt.
Finding, comparing, and evaluating course materials requires significant time and effort, especially when resources vary in quality, format, and supporting materials.
Faculty often find useful teaching resources but have no designated place to save and organize them for future classes, relying on email, bookmarks, folders, or other disconnected methods.
Mapping Student Data to Faculty Assumptions
The 180 student surveys gave me a mountain of data that completely shifted my direction away from a companion app. However, my initial research phase with faculty was much smaller in scale.
My Approach: Because the faculty data was limited, I used these four friction points as starting hypotheses. I designed the ecosystem to be highly modular so that it can easily adapt and pivot as I collect deeper faculty feedback during the next phase of development.
Understanding Faculty Needs
Competitive Audit
To understand how existing platforms handle asset sharing, I analyzed one direct competitor and three indirect competitors.
While tools like Diigo excel at individual bookmarking and OER Commons acts as a static repository, they lack the seamless, real-time faculty collaboration and flexible grouping needed to easily build local, shared course ecosystems.
Translating Faculty Insights into Digital Architecture
To bridge the gap between faculty pain points and an intuitive digital workspace, I mapped out a streamlined content repository. My primary design constraint was minimizing instructional friction—ensuring educators can discover, save, and recommend learning resources in under three steps.
Lo-fidelity Prototype
Reducing Friction in the Learning Loop
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Streamlined Entry: A centralized homepage and prominent "Add Resource" callout create an intuitive entry point.
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Intent-Driven Sorting: Forked pathways let users save resources directly to private class libraries or recommend them to the shared faculty repository.
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Modular Organization: Class-specific tagging structures ensure saved content remains organized, searchable, and easily accessible.
Usability Studies
I conducted two rounds of usability testing, combining three moderated and four unmoderated studies. Findings from the first round informed the evolution from initial wireframes to refined mockups, while the second round used a high-fidelity prototype to identify areas for further refinement and improve the overall user experience.
Participant Quotes
“It's a living bookmark for classroom planning/enhancement. I love it.”
"This app allows you to save and organize educational resources in a few easy clicks. You can also contribute to the school's larger repository by recommending a resource."
“I like having a spot where I can save websites I find useful for my class in an app. I have something similar for recipes and I love it.”
Refining the Design
Optimizing Layout for Class Setup
I initially considered highlighting recent faculty contributions to encourage collaboration, but ultimately prioritized simplicity. Separating class setup on the homepage from a personal resource library creates a cleaner, more intuitive experience.
Establishing Consistent Navigation Patterns
These mockups show iterative refinements to visual consistency, navigation, and usability. I streamlined the menu by integrating class libraries into Home and expanded folder options to include classes, clubs, and projects.
Accessibility Considerations
I used clear headings, consistent placement and visual hierarchy to help users quickly identify important information and navigate the app. Buttons and interactive elements are visually distinct from supporting content.
I used legible font sizes and sufficient color contrast between text and backgrounds to improve readability for users with visual impairments. Important information is not communicated through color alone.
I used consistent navigation and familiar icons throughout the app to reduce cognitive load and make key features easier to find. The same navigation structure and interaction patterns are maintained across screens.
Next Steps
I plan to work with a larger group of Faculty to validate the revised bookmarking and resource-sharing experience.
I'm looking forward to working with Palm Beach State College to test how the Faculty Resource Exchange could compliment the colleges existing OER repository.
I'll prioritize the core features—saving resources by class, organizing saved resources, and recommending resources for repository review—before adding more advanced functionality.