Save Tuba is a gamified sustainability-education app for grades 2–5 in Almaty, Kazakhstan, built by a Lehigh team through the Global Social Impact Fellowship. This page summarizes my work redesigning the app based on teacher focus-group feedback as a Global Social Impact Fellow.

January 2023 – December 2023, including a field deployment in Almaty, Kazakhstan in May 2023.

Role

I led product-testing research and designed interview protocols (Spring 2023), ran 6 focus groups with 30+ participants during the Kazakhstan field visit (May 2023), and synthesized findings into design recommendations for the software team (Fall 2023). I was the first author and presenter on the resulting paper, which won the Best Paper Award at GHTC 2023.

I translated the insights from focus groups, ethnographic fieldwork and thematic analysis to UI/UX recommendations.

Research Steps Taken

• Designed interview protocols and product-testing research (Spring 2023)
• Conducted 6 focus groups with 30+ teachers across Kazakh- and Russian-medium schools during a field deployment in Almaty (May 2023)
• Synthesized field research through thematic analysis into design recommendations for the software team (Fall 2023)

Who we designed for

Students in grades 2–5 across Kazakh-medium and Russian-medium schools, and the teachers guiding them. Multilingual access (Kazakh, Russian, English) was essential.

Research questions

• What's actually stopping students from adopting sustainable habits, if the information already exists?
• What do teachers need from this app to actually use it in the classroom, without feeling like a burden?
• How can we make the same curriculum work across communities without feeling generic in either?

Core needs coming out of the focus groups

• Content that ties directly into what teachers already teach, not a separate add-on subject
• Curriculum aligned with the national standards
• An emotional hook that makes an abstract issue feel personal to an 8-year-old
• Simplified in-app navigation for students and teachers