KidsZoom

The problem

Zoom owns the call. Nobody owns the classroom.

Schools adopted Zoom for live lessons, but everything around the lesson happens elsewhere. Students chat on WhatsApp, recordings stay with the teacher, and nothing exists before or after class.

Competitors are moving in, with Google Classroom adding AI and Microsoft Teams bundling classes into school accounts. Most students already use AI tools for study. Zoom has the video, the whiteboard and the trust. It is missing the classroom layer.

• 55.9% Zoom’s share of video conferencing

• $209B projected K–12 EdTech market by 2033

• 86% of students already use AI tools

Research

What students, teachers and parents told me.

• Focus slips with every tab. Switching tabs to find notes or chat breaks attention, and parents named focus as the number one challenge.

• Zoom fatigue after one or two hours. Back-to-back lessons wear students down, and breaks happen at random, if at all.

• Recordings stay with the teacher. Students who miss a class or lose connection have no easy way to catch up.

• Teachers don’t know the tools. Polls and interactive features exist, but most teachers rarely use them.

• Younger students use tablets. Zoom feels like a shrunken desktop app on the devices they actually have.

• Parents want summaries. Session summaries, a parent view and anonymous Q&A were the most requested features.

Two students

• Oliver, 15–16. Laptop user. Rates his own engagement 4 out of 10 and drifts to other tabs.

• Sophie, 11–12. Tablet user. Prefers Google Meet, and gets tired in long sessions.

Iteration

What the usability test changed.

I tested the mid-fidelity prototype on mobile screens in Maze.

• Students wanted control over breaks. I added Request Break to the student controls. The teacher approves it, and a shared countdown starts for the whole class.

• Recording was hard to find. Record moved into the main control bar, and every past lesson now lives on the home screen with Play and Share.

• Emoji avatars felt fake. Video tiles now use real photos, so the classroom reads like a real call.

• Slow loading and frozen animations. I rebuilt the prototype as coded React in Figma Make, with responsive layouts and a lightweight confetti moment.

Final design

Familiar Zoom controls, with a classroom built around them.

• Home: a live clock, today’s schedule with one-tap Join, a calendar, chat with teachers and classmates, and an AI Companion that can answer “What classes do I have today?”

• Live classroom: Zoom’s control bar in its usual order, plus Raise Hand with a visible queue, Request Break, and public or private chat.

• Teacher dashboard: participation, hands raised, a live leaderboard, topics covered, polls, and a red ring on students who haven’t spoken yet.

• After class: confetti, an AI summary, top performers, your own performance, and the recording with Watch, Download and Share with Parents.

Trust in the small moments

Sharing shows exactly who was notified. Recordings show a processing bar before “Recording Ready”. Every AI panel says “AI can make mistakes. Review for accuracy.” Students pick the recipient before sending, and private messages are labelled.

Measuring success

What a pilot would measure.

These are proposed targets for a one-term pilot with partner schools, not results.

• Participation per class up 25%, and self-rated engagement up from 4 to 7 out of 10.

• 80% of lessons over an hour include a break.

• Two recording or notes opens per active student each week.

• Education subscriptions up 15% year on year, with less churn to Google Meet.

Next on the roadmap: focus mode, a low-bandwidth mode, teacher scheduling, a parent dashboard, and live captions.