Event: SoCal UX Camp 2016 Presented by: Steven Meyer In the United States there are still plenty of people without access to the Internet. Even those with mobile Internet access can still be plagued with dead zones, or low reception areas. Properly managing your application flow from these online to offline transitions will improve the user experience. In this session we will take a look at Chromebooks in education and ways that we have improved the offline experience.

2. Offline Strategy for an
Online World
Taking a look at Chromebooks in education.
August 6th, 2016

3. Table of Contents
3 Introduction
7 Chromebook Overview
11 Chromebook Analysis
14 Open Discussion
15 Designing for Education
24 Conclusion
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4. Introduction

5. Introduction
Experience
• Currently the Lead User Experience Designer
for K-12 Learning Services at Pearson.
• Previously worked for O’Reilly Auto Parts on
their B2B ecommerce website that generated
~500 million annually.
• Experience ranges from startups to Fortune 500
companies with a primary focus on web
applications.
Education
• Master of Science, Technology (MSTech),
concentration in Graphic Information
Technology, Arizona State University.
• Certificate, User Experience and Customer-
Centered Design, California State University,
Fullerton.
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https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenmeyer1

6. I think it’s safe to say that we live in a very
connected part of the world. I think it’s unsafe to
say that our online experience is consistent in a
way that we are always connected.
Has your home Internet connection ever gone
out? Have you ever travelled into a dead zone
where your phone’s data wouldn’t work?
How about low-income families in the United
States that don’t have access at home to the
Internet? Even better, how about the world?
How do you plan for, and design an experience
that will hold up during these transitions of going
online and offline?
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7. At Pearson we strive to serve all of our customers
in the best way possible.
We constantly tackle better ways to bring the best
possible experience by:
- Designing for all ages
- Keeping accessibility at the forefront
- Providing a positive experience for when
devices are both online and offline
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8. Chromebook Overview

9. Affordable, Manageable, Scalable
8Reference: https://www.google.com/edu/products/devices/

10. Unlimited Students*
9Reference: https://www.google.com/edu/products/devices/

11. Basic Chromebook
10https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Chromebook-XE500C13-K01US-11-6-Laptop/dp/B01APA6K6M
• 16GB Solid State Drive

12. Chromebook
Analysis

13. Chromebook Storage
12Reference: https://www.google.com/edu/products/devices/
• 10.30GB remaining after logging in for the first time (on 16GB device).

14. Offline/Online
Chromebooks are primarily for online use and
have limited functionality offline.
Many Chrome apps are actually just links to
websites. These are known as hosted apps and
they run in the browser.
Packaged apps usually contain all of the files to
run offline, but this means you have to download
them to the device.
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15. Discussion
What are some Chromebook advantages?
What are some Chromebook disadvantages?
Can you really have unlimited students on a
Chromebook device?
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16. Designing for Education

17. Making Content Available
Offline
Students need an equal opportunity to learn.
A physical book can be accessed regardless of
your Internet connection. A digital book, course
materials, and digital assignments can pose
certain challenges.
Is there an equal opportunity if one student has
Internet at home and another does not?
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18. Managing a Seamless Transition
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1. Make the transition from online to offline as seamless as
possible.
2. Manage the size of the content you are producing.
3. Give the user friendly options for managing their own device
space.
4. Save state now, and then upload later.

19. 1. Seamless Transitions
Facebook now allows you to post offline.
Whenever you go back online it will upload the
post.
In the education industry we do our best to provide
a similar experience. Students can complete an
assessment offline, and the device will
automatically submit the assessment to the
instructor when the student is back online.
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20. Ask yourself:
Does this have to be in real time?
If yes, then why does it have to be in
real time? Is there a new way to envision
a hybrid of real time and offline?
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21. 2. Managing Content Size
Smaller content sizes solve several issues. They
reduce:
- Download time
- Device storage needed
- Amount of data used
When moving over to our Chromebook application
we started to drop the use of background images
in our course lessons that we use on iOS and
Windows. We want the ability to store as much as
possible for when we are offline.
We also ditched the use JPEG and PNG files for
simple icons and illustrative images and moved to
SVG’s.
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22. 3. Managing Space
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Giving your users some control over their content can also be a good idea. Below shows
Unit 1 ready to use, Unit G-1 downloading, and Unit 2 has the option to download it.
Instead of downloading the entire course (which you still can if space allows) you can
select individual units. They will now be available offline.

23. This is similar to our Facebook example
on seamless transitions.
In an education setting we can often
send/receive assignments, take/submit
assessments, and also add annotations
to books that we are reading. These all
wind up in the cloud which allows you to
change devices, but being offline
shouldn’t prevent you from completing
your work.
You should be able to use the
application as you normally would, and
the cloud activity can take place at a
later time.
4. Upload Later
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24. Reference: https://developer.chrome.com/apps/richNotifications
Uploading an item at a later point in time is a
great tool when dealing with offline scenarios.
Remember, this ties in with our seamless
transition point. The end result should be an
experience that the user doesn’t have to track
and be worried about.
Chrome also has the use of notifications which
can be a great option to notify a user at a later
point that something sent, or did not send if an
error occurred.
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25. Conclusion

26. Conclusion
There are many ways to deal with
offline scenarios and these are
just a few that relate to designing
a Chromebook application for
education.
Nearly all applications can benefit
from some sort of offline
functionality. Our Facebook
example proved that even an
application that seems to solely
rely on the Internet, still has a
level of offline functionality.
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27. Questions?
Find out more about us at
http://www.Pearson.com