Tinkercad is a free app for 3D design, electronics, and coding used by millions of students and creative innovators worldwide. I designed a new achievement badge feature to motivate students to learn new skills in Tinkercad.
I was the sole UX designer on a small Agile team that included front-end and back-end developers, QA, a product manager, and an engineering manager. I conducted research, led team brainstorming, and then proposed an MVP solution for in-app workflows. I also designed the custom badge illustrations.
Time: Started Feb 2024, design phase ~ 1.5 months, launched in August 2024.
Problem to solve
We noticed that many members of our community were informally tracking and sharing their achievements in Tinkercad. Some people were hand collecting counts of staff picks, challenge wins, and design reactions, while others even created virtual trophy cases. We know that tracking milestones and rewarding successes is motivating. Our hypothesis: there is a lot of potential to enhance the Tinkercad experience through the addition of Tinkercad achievements.
Project goals:
• Improve in-app learning and onboarding by motivating students to complete tutorials and explore new features
• Increase ongoing engagement and sense of accomplishment for reaching milestones
• Introduce design and make skills and STEM learning goals for career readiness
• Make Tinkercad more fun!
Process
I started by researching other apps with strong achievements systems to get a better sense of the different types of structures and options we might consider. For instance, there are one-time badges vs. repeatable badges. There are badges that you can earn anytime vs. badges that are time constrained. Some badges can be automated while others are manually awarded in real life.
Next I led an internal workshop where we brainstormed badge ideas. After a lot of thought and discussion, the team decided to launch with 12 badges to start focusing on design and make skills. These badges map the skills students are learning today in Tinkercad with possible future professional skills and career paths.
Solution - Teacher view
One of the most important parts of this feature is how it functionally works within Tinkercad classrooms. I brainstormed ways to integrate the new feature while minimizing development effort to help us meet an ambitious launch timeline and collaborated with stakeholders to help the team reach alignment on MVP features.
The badges are manually assigned to students by teachers in Tinkercad classrooms. Teachers can use our suggested criteria to determine when to assign the badges and can easily track which students have received which badges. It was important to us that this feature gives teachers control - they can use their discretion on when it makes sense to award a badge or decide not to use the feature at all in their classroom.
Solution - Student view
Once a student is awarded a badge it will show up on the student's dashboard in a celebratory announcement. Students can then view their badges to see which ones they've already earned and learn more about other available badges.
Solution - Badge illustrations
Many of the successful achievement systems I looked at had strong visual design so I knew the overall final aesthetic of our badges was very important. Additionally, stakeholders wanted these badges to double as marketing tools to help improve recognition of both Tinkercad and the parent brand Autodesk. I spent a lot of time brainstorming to try to get the balance right between the two brands.
The final badge illustrations are fun and cheerful and fit right in to the existing Tinkercad brand ecosystem. I utilized isometric drawing to reference the 3D nature of Tinkercad's workspace and pulled the colors from Tinkercad's logo. The Autodesk parent brand is present but in a subtle way, allowing the Tinkercad brand that teachers and students know and love to be center stage.
Solution - Website marketing
We crafted informative website pages for the badges so that teachers and students had a place to find more detailed information about each skill's recommended criteria and access learning resources. I designed the page layouts and a product teammate wrote the content.
ISTE booth
The new badges featured prominently at our ISTE 2024 booth (ISTE is an annual conference for teachers). The booth structure displayed the badges on each side of our logo cubes and we had printed sticker sheets of the badges as giveaways. Note: a different designer created the booth layout.
Measuring success
Just 1 month after launching we already had 940 total teachers try out the feature, awarding almost 6,000 badges to their students. After the second month total badges awarded had reached about 15,000.
Quotes from teachers after launch:
“Perfect timing for these badges! The team at my school was seeking ideas for student engagement when they have early finishers. Badges motivate a lot of our students.”
"The idea of giving badges on Tinkercad is just amazing! Exactly what we needed as educators."
"These micro-credentials are a great way of encouraging student engagement across a range of domains and celebrating success."