Platform & Curriculum to Teach Sustainability at Preschools
Happy Little Planet School
ROLE: Product owner, design team lead, digital product designer (ux/ui), graphic designer, webdesigner, project manager, copywriter (AI-assisted), co-founder
TOOLS: Paper & pencil, Miro, Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, InVision, Squarespace, Html & CSS, ChatGPT
DURATION: 1.5 years
Nurture a generation naturally committed to earth and humanity.
Imagine a classroom where sustainability comes alive through playful learning—where children explore crucial environmental concepts alongside endearing characters, through a perfect blend of digital and hands-on activities.
Building on the success of our mobile app, survey results from early childhood experts and parents, and feedback from our mentors and investors, we expanded our vision to create greater impact by bringing Happy Little Planet into preschool classrooms. Keeping the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals as our core framework, we transformed our proven educational approach into a comprehensive platform that equips teachers with everything they need to make sustainability education engaging and effective.
For teachers, it means having ready-to-use resources at their fingertips. For children, it's an adventure where serious concepts transform into memorable experiences through play. Together, they build the foundation for a more sustainable tomorrow.
The Problem
Our deep dive into sustainability education for preschoolers revealed a significant gap in the educational landscape. While schools were beginning to address sustainability, they lacked comprehensive resources and structured guidance for teaching these crucial concepts effectively.
Just as we discovered with mobile apps, most educational initiatives only scratched the surface—focusing primarily on basic concepts like waste sorting or general environmental awareness. Teachers faced two critical challenges:
1. No reliable, comprehensive curriculum resources available that addressed sustainability in an age-appropriate way.
2. Absence of structured activities that not only taught sustainability concepts but also supported broader skill development and value formation.
The need was clear: educators needed a trusted platform that could provide both theoretical foundation and practical tools to make sustainability education meaningful and engaging for young learners.
The Solution
We knew it was time to think bigger than mobile games. By leveraging our expertise and success with the Happy Little Planet app, we created a comprehensive educational platform that gives preschool teachers everything they need to bring sustainability education into their classrooms:
Happy Little Planet School, developed in collaboration with early childhood and sustainability experts, offers a rich ecosystem of resources. At its heart is a growing library of engaging group activities, each thoughtfully designed for classroom implementation. While our mobile games and audio books remain available for individual use too, the platform's focus is on creating meaningful collective learning experiences.
Every activity is carefully mapped to specific UN Sustainable Development Goals and designed to develop key skills across three crucial areas: cognitive development, socio-emotional growth, and behavioural learning.
By integrating sustainability values into daily learning experiences, we're helping to nurture a generation for whom environmental consciousness and empathy come naturally—creating a foundation for a more sustainable and compassionate future.
A short video about the School platform
The Process
Step 1 Discovery & research
My journey with the school platform was deeply personal. Coming from a family of primary school-, high school- and university teachers and having taught in a bilingual high school myself for a short period at the very beginning of my career, I brought both professional insight and personal passion to this project. As product owner of the school edition, I was determined to create something truly impactful.
1. Comprehensive Research Our investigation was methodical and multi-faceted: we analysed children's literature on sustainability, conducted extensive review of UNESCO educational materials, interviewed academic experts in teacher training, consulted with early childhood specialists and kindergarten teachers, engaged with our startup mentors about US educational market requirements, performed classroom testing of tablet integration with our app, and established partnership with Rogers School and Preschool in Budapest.
2. Creating the Framework UNESCO's document entitled "Education for Sustainable Development Goals - Learning Objectives" became our foundational guide alongside other useful UNESCO sites and ebooks. While this document provided detailed age-appropriate learning objectives for each SDG, we needed to adapt it for our younger audience. I developed our platform's core structure by: expanding UNESCO's framework to include recommendations for preschool-age children, integrating age-appropriate skill development objectives, aligning our existing games and books with SDG learning goals, and creating a comprehensive value set for early childhood development.
This thorough groundwork ensured our platform would serve not just as a collection of activities, but as a complete educational framework that bridges sustainability concepts with early childhood development.
One of the UNESCO sources that became our guideline.
Step 2 Ideation
- Shaping the Platform -
Building on our extensive research, we moved into a focused ideation phase to transform insights into actionable plans. Through collaborative workshops and in-depth consultations with Rogers School teachers, we began shaping the foundation of our educational platform.
Strategic Planning Our ideation process began with foundational elements: creating detailed user personas for both teachers and students, conducting comprehensive POINT analysis to identify problems, opportunities, insights, needs and themes, and defining core, nice-to-have, and future product features. We established project timelines and mapped potential user journeys to ensure a clear development path.
Content Framework Development I led regular brainstorming sessions with Rogers School teachers to establish the educational backbone of our platform. Together, we created detailed content frameworks for each SDG, developing guidelines for activity creation that went beyond simple sustainability lessons. We carefully mapped out how each activity should incorporate specific skill development, determined what supplementary materials teachers would need to maximise classroom engagement, and established clear criteria for content creation. These sessions were crucial in ensuring our platform would deliver both educational value and practical classroom utility.
We carefully evaluated our current position and set clear targets for where we wanted to take the platform. This structured approach helped us prioritize features that would deliver the most value to educators while maintaining our focus on engaging young learners.
Scoping for product features
Teacher's user persona
Step 3 Design
- From Vision to Reality -
1. Platform Architecture Starting with teacher requirements from Rogers School, I developed the initial platform architecture and screen hierarchy. While our original vision included advanced features like a complex lesson planner, teacher profiles, detailed search, new digital games for groups and classroom adjusted content from our app, we had to make strategic decisions to ensure a viable first release. We refined our feature set to focus on core functionality that would deliver the most value while staying true to our mission of making sustainability education accessible and effective.
The core structure of the platform as of January 21st 2022:
The budget-cut simplified structure as of February 9th 2022:
2. UX Design & Testing The design process was highly collaborative with Rogers. I created low-fidelity wireframes with the essential features, which then I quickly turned into clickable prototypes for teacher testing. Through regular feedback sessions with our teacher collaborators, we continuously refined the user experience, ensuring the platform would be intuitive and effective in classroom settings.
3. Content Development Our work with Rogers deepened as we moved into detailed content creation. For each SDG (we focused on five SDGs), we established a structured development process: beginning with in-depth kick-off calls to explore the sustainability topic and our available games and audio books, followed by collaborative ideation sessions. We decided to craft 10-12 activities for each goal for the MVP. The Rogers teachers then transformed these initial concepts into fully-formed activities, applying the framework we'd previously established. Through detailed review sessions, we refined each activity, with teachers providing crucial context and explanations.
Each activity was thoughtfully categorised to help teachers quickly find the perfect fit for their lessons. We developed a comprehensive classification system that included: (1) activity type (warm-up, main activity, or wrap-up), (2) format (digital or non-digital), (3) setting (indoor or outdoor), (4) style (sports, discussion, game, or audio book-based), (5) age recommendations, and (6) duration.
The information page for each activity was designed to be both comprehensive and quickly scannable, featuring intuitive icons for quick reference. Teachers could find everything they needed: detailed step-by-step instructions, a clear breakdown of skills and values that children would develop through the activity, suggested discussion questions, required materials lists, downloadable resources, and specific learning objectives tied to the relevant SDG.
Before finalising any content, Rogers teachers tested each activity in their classrooms, providing real-world validation of our materials. This crucial step ensured that every activity was not just theoretically sound, but practically engaging and implementable in actual classroom settings. Only after successful classroom testing and any necessary refinements did I polish the content using AI assistance, preparing it for platform implementation while maintaining consistency across all materials.
The anatomy of an activity info page:
4. Visual Design As design team lead, I worked closely with Fruzsi my fantastic animation artist colleague and co-founder to orchestrate the creation of our platform's comprehensive visual language. This extensive project required coordinating the production of nearly 400 unique graphic elements, from custom SDG icons and skill symbols to educational materials like worksheets, memory games, and discussion cards. Under my direction, our team ensured each visual component supported the learning objectives while maintaining Happy Little Planet's signature playful aesthetic, with special consideration given to materials that needed to function in both digital and print formats.
Some of the activity cover images
Values- and skills icons
5. Final Design Phase With the graphic design tasks thoughtfully distributed among team members, I turned my focus to transforming our low-fidelity wireframes into polished, high-fidelity designs. Carefully adhering to our established brand identity guidelines, I crafted each screen to create an engaging and visually cohesive experience. Once these high-fidelity wireframes received approval from all stakeholders, we were ready to move into development.
The Happy Little Planet School Platform Style Guide
Step 4 Development
- Crafting Solutions with Limited Resources -
Despite strong interest from investors and mentors, the school platform faced internal challenges that limited our development resources. This constraint required creative problem-solving to bring our vision to life without compromising on quality or user experience.
1. Innovative Implementation Drawing on my HTML, CSS, and Squarespace expertise, I found a way to transform our comprehensive designs into a functional platform while maintaining tight budget control. As our mobile app campaigns had temporarily paused new game development, I could focus on building the educational platform from the ground up. Using custom code within Squarespace, I carefully recreated the approved Sketch designs, ensuring the platform maintained its professional aesthetic and functionality.
2. Technical Integration While I constructed the main platform, our development team worked on adapting our existing mobile games and audio books for browser compatibility. The result was a responsive educational platform that gave teachers flexible access to our content across various devices—from smartboards to tablets and smartphones.
3. Achievement The final product successfully delivered: (1) a fully responsive design working across all devices, (2) seamless integration of games and audio books, (3) beautiful presentation of educational activities teachers involved in user-testings loved, (4) subscription-based access to resources, (5) consistent brand experience throughout
This solution demonstrated that with creativity and technical knowledge, we could overcome financial constraints while still delivering a professional, user-friendly platform. The ability to single-handedly build this first version of our educational platform, meeting both design and functionality requirements, remains one of my proudest achievements in this project.
Some pages of the platform (from left to right): (1) main page with activities grouped according to SDGs, (2) an activity info page and (3) the buddies page with some info and downloadable images of the HLP characters
Step 5 Testing & Results
- Validating Our Impact -
Through extensive testing with Rogers School, we continuously evaluated the platform's effectiveness in real classroom settings. Our periodic assessments measured both immediate engagement and long-term learning retention, delivering remarkable results:
1. Student Impact 96% of children showed active enthusiasm for Happy Little Planet School lessons, 75% of students retained key sustainability concepts even six months after their initial exposure.
2. Teacher Feedback The platform resonated strongly with educators, who highlighted several key benefits: (1) significantly reduced lesson preparation time thanks to our comprehensive resources, (2) high appreciation for the platform's design and visual elements, (3) personal enjoyment in delivering the lessons, enhancing teaching experience, (4) enthusiasm for planned features, particularly the upcoming lesson planner.
These metrics and qualitative feedback validated our approach to making sustainability education both engaging and memorable for young learners while providing valuable tools for educators. The enthusiasm from both teachers and students confirmed that we had succeeded in creating a platform that serves its dual purpose: making sustainability education both effective and enjoyable.
Beyond the Platform: Visual Communication
- Brand Extensions & Marketing Materials -
As one of the key members of our startup team, my role extended well beyond product ownership and design leadership. I spearheaded our digital presence by creating the Happy Little Planet website from the ground up, applying the same rigorous design process we used for our other products—from initial wireframes through final UI implementation. Using AI-assisted copywriting, I crafted compelling messaging that aligned with our brand voice.
My scope also included creating various marketing materials, from one-pagers and promotional flyers to pitch decks for the educational platform. This comprehensive involvement allowed me to ensure consistency across all touchpoints while maintaining the playful yet professional essence of Happy Little Planet.
Some of the Happy Little Planet website pages
(Home, For Schools, and Games & Books)
Onepager I created for preschools to introduce Happy Little Planet School
(I designed it and crafted the copy with AI-assistance)
Reflection
- A Journey of Growth & Future Possibilities -
The Happy Little Planet School platform represents one of my most fulfilling professional challenges—a project that touched every aspect of product design and development. From deep-diving into educational research to crafting user experiences and even coding the platform itself, each phase brought unique challenges that pushed me to expand my capabilities.
Learning Through Challenges Despite the platform not receiving the internal support it deserved, the experience proved invaluable. Every obstacle we encountered—whether financial constraints or organisational priorities—pushed us to find creative solutions and taught important lessons about product development in a startup environment.
My Key Takeaways (1) The importance of thorough research and testing in educational product design. (2) How to adapt and find creative solutions within resource constraints. (3) The value of strong partnerships (like our collaboration with Rogers School). (4) The critical role of user feedback in shaping educational tools. (5) The importance of technical skills development across multiple platforms and technologies.
While the closing of Happy Little Planet marks the end of this particular chapter, my vision of creating impactful educational tools remains alive. The knowledge I gained, skills developed, and lessons learned have laid a strong foundation for my future endeavours in educational product design or any other product design that may come my way.
I remain convinced that the core concept—making sustainability education engaging and accessible—is more relevant than ever. Whether through future opportunities or different ventures, I look forward to applying these insights to create educational platforms that can make a real difference in how we prepare the next generation for a sustainable future.
