Role of user experience design practices in sustainable secondary education in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Sustainable Education has been emphasized as one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations in order to create a sustainable community that is future ready to face the environmental, economic and social crisis that has occurred due to human activity. With digitalization, the rise of web-based educational platforms has increased in Sri Lanka and the contribution to provide Sustainable Education through these platforms has to be studied to further improve them. In this study the use of UX Design practices when developing web-based educational platforms for the Sustainable Secondary Education is analyzed using two cases which lead the web-based education in Sri Lanka. The main objective of the study was to identify the role of UX Design practices to aid Sustainable Secondary Education in the two cases chosen and thereby find gaps and insights in process that would benefit future designers, developers, and researchers to contribute to web-based Sustainable Education in Sri Lanka. The research was qualitative, and data collected through literature review and in-depth interviews of multiple-case studies and were analyzed through a thematic analysis method. The study revealed the use of UX Design practices when doing iterations and when making choices related to content development and the affordable solutions used to cope with limited resources available to the cases studied. The study contributes major insights related to developing web-based educational applications in relation to the Sri Lankan context as well as for developing countries.