Future Education Mastery Accelerator
A learning platform built for Ethiopian students — from scratch.
Overview
FEMA — Future Education Mastery Accelerator, or as its Ge'ez root translates, "the fire that is to be kindled within us" — is an Ethiopian educational technology platform designed to make quality learning accessible to students across the country.
The project was undertaken during the 10 Academy UX Design Accelerator, where I was tasked with designing a complete mobile learning management system from the ground up — zero existing product, zero existing research.
The scope was ambitious: a single app serving four entirely different user types — students, teachers, parents, and administrators — each with distinct goals, workflows, and permissions. The challenge was designing a system that felt cohesive and simple for every user, without building four separate apps.
4
User types
7
Weeks end-to-end
2
Languages (EN + AM)
40+
Screens designed
The Problem
Ethiopia has one of the youngest and fastest-growing populations in the world, yet its education system faces significant infrastructure gaps — overcrowded classrooms, limited access to supplementary learning materials, and almost no digital bridge between teachers, students, and parents.
Existing LMS platforms (Moodle, Google Classroom) are built for Western contexts: they require stable internet, assume English literacy, and offer no pathway for parents to monitor a young child's progress or for administrators to approve content before it reaches students.
FEMA needed to solve for this context specifically: low-bandwidth environments, bilingual content (Amharic and English), age-appropriate access controls, and a content approval workflow so administrators could gatekeep quality before it reached students.
“The opportunity wasn't just to make a learning app. It was to design the infrastructure layer that Ethiopian education was missing — a single trusted system connecting students, teachers, parents, and schools.”
Understanding the Users
The most complex design challenge was architecting a system that felt tailored to each user type without fragmenting the experience.
Primary learner
The core user. Students above Grade 6 can create their own account. Those below require a parent to create and manage the account — an age-gate that shaped the entire onboarding architecture.
Content creator & grader
Teachers receive accounts created by admin. Primary jobs: create course content, grade assignments, track student progress, and answer questions from students and parents.
Monitor & advocate
Parents manage child profiles, enrol their children in courses, monitor grades, and contact teachers. Unanswered questions escalate to FEMA admins after a set waiting period.
Gatekeeper & manager
Admins control the entire platform — approving or declining teacher-submitted content, managing roles, viewing platform-wide analytics, and handling escalated parent questions.
Design Process
Audited Google Classroom, Moodle, Duolingo, and local Ethiopian edtech tools. Identified gaps: none offered bilingual support, offline-first thinking, or an age-gated parent/child account structure.
Built 4 detailed personas. Mapped complete user flow charts for all four roles — identifying where flows intersect (teacher grades → parent notification) and where they diverge. The student flow alone contained 15+ decision nodes including the Grade 6 age-gate branching.
Created end-to-end journey maps for the student and teacher — mapping touchpoints, emotional states, and interaction moments from initial app launch through to course completion. Built the full site map covering all 4 user roles and 40+ screens.
Wireframed all core screens for each role in Figma — prioritising information architecture before visual design. Key decisions: bottom tab navigation with a central action button for students/teachers; a simplified 2-level navigation for parents; a data-dense dashboard view for admin.
Designed the FEMA logo, colour palette, and typography system. Then moved to high-fidelity screens — applying the brand across all 40+ screens with consistent components, motion patterns, and interaction states.
Built a clickable Figma prototype and conducted walkthroughs with the team. Iterated based on feedback and finalised the design for developer handoff — including a complete component library and annotated specifications.
Design Decisions
Age-gated onboarding
Students in Grade 6 and below cannot create accounts independently — the system routes them through a parent-created profile. This wasn't a technical constraint; it was a deliberate UX decision to protect younger users while keeping the parent informed and in control from day one.
Onboarding quiz
New students are offered an optional course evaluation quiz at first launch. Completing it unlocks a personalised course recommendation list tailored to their grade and knowledge level. This creates immediate value for engaged users without blocking access for those who want to explore freely.
Content pipeline
Teachers submit course content to admins before it goes live. This was a core trust mechanism — ensuring FEMA could maintain quality and curriculum integrity. Declined content came with clear admin feedback so teachers could iterate.
Bilingual design
Every screen was designed with both Amharic and English content in mind — not as an afterthought. This influenced text field sizing, font choices, and how content-heavy screens were laid out to accommodate the longer word lengths common in Amharic script.
Outcome
Over 7 weeks, I delivered a fully documented design system covering all four user roles — student, teacher, parent, and admin — across 40+ screens with a complete component library, annotated specifications, and a clickable Figma prototype.
The project demonstrated something important: complex multi-persona systems don't have to feel complex. By investing deeply in user flows and information architecture before touching visual design, the final product felt cohesive and approachable for every user type — despite the underlying system complexity.