MOCCA
READING COMPREHENSION ASSESSMENT APP
Product
Web app to help teachers understand performance, properly target instructions, and track results.
Project roles
Visual Design,
UI & UX Implementation,
Development,
Quality Assurance
THE CHALLENGE
Emberex was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to improve and further commercialize MOCCA - the Multiple-choice Online Causal Comprehension Assessment that is based on research from California State University-Chico, Georgia State University, University of Minnesota, University of North Dakota, and the University of Oregon. We partnered with researchers from these universities to build a data-based decision-making tool. Implementation of the MOCCA assessment itself was straightforward, so we focused the bulk of our efforts on designing and building a highly-interactive, elegant interface for user data and results interpretation. In addition, the improvements increased the likelihood of further grants and a successful commercialization effort.
Grant submission + Video production
In our efforts to obtain the SBIR grant from the Department of Education, our in-house creative team produced an animated video to help illustrate the team’s vision to the grant reviewers. Even today, this video remains a delightful and useful overview of the MOCCA project.
Check out our video
THE PROCESS
The design, development, and QA teams from Emberex met twice monthly with the Elementary and College Expert Panel research team members, as well as communicated as needed via Slack. As always, we began our process with Discovery -- honing in our clear goals for project success. We then presented wireframes and frequent design updates, allowing space for all parties to engage together in spirited review and feedback sessions.
OLD CODE + NEW CODE UNITE
The improvements and new features were applied to an existing application that was built by the research universities. Emberex has extensive experience with legacy code from universities and other clients, so we knew what to do. We immediately started open communications via meetings and Slack channels, and we quickly built relationships with the university developers. The Emberex team leveraged the legacy developer's detailed domain knowledge and their experience with the existing code. This avoided unnecessary learning curves and concerns over code ownership.
THE RESULTS
The result of the team's passionate focus and work is an elegant, accessible, easy-to-use interface that users can grow with for years to come - improving the possibility of obtaining additional grants for research and commercialization.
Technology
Node, Angular, MySQL