Sprout
Sex education is hardly standardized across the US.
The United States has a significant disparity in the way sexual education is taught. Some southern states exclusively teach abstinence-only sex education, which can significantly impact physical and mental health. We wondered why there isn't a standardized guideline for sexual education.
There actually is a standard!
My hackathon partners and I found the National Sex Education Standard, a resource we never knew about. It outlines age-appropriate standards for students for a range of categories, including consent and healthy relationships, sexual health, gender identity, and anatomy, among others. However, the text is lengthy and often not enforced.
Main Issues
Lack of Mandated Sex Education
Only 30 states mandate sex education. Many adolescents receive little to no formal sex education, leading to biased and sometimes false information.
Delayed Introduction
Most students receive their first form of sex education from 6th to 12th grade. Many important topics should be taught much earlier, leaving crucial gaps in formative years.
Challenges in Creating Curricula
Sex education remains a taboo topic in many communities, making unbiased curricula difficult to create due to teachers' and parents' personal biases.
Sprout
The Duolingo for Sex Education
Sprout replaces the need for schools to develop sex education curricula for various age groups. It can fully substitute traditional classroom instruction and offers comprehensive sex education to those who might not otherwise receive it.
Rough sketches, Lofi wireframe
Sprout teaches through a mix of exercises...
A visual and practical approach to using birth control methods like unwrapping and using condoms, with age-appropriate graphics.
Prepares students for real-life scenarios, allowing them to practice consent, saying no, and establishing boundaries.
Tests understanding and reinforces learning by providing a comprehensive evaluation of students' grasp of key concepts.
Privacy and Safety
Learning is a personal moment and should not be shared. Sprout preserves the user's privacy by storing everything locally, nothing is transmitted to a server or shared with a third party.
The curriculum is assigned to the student by their age, ensuring that they do not learn anything that is inappropriate.
User Flow Diagram
Theming
Since the app is targeted towards younger audiences, I wanted to add a mascot to bring fun and comfort to the users' experiences.
For audiences where real, medical diagrams may not be appropriate, we opted for imagery such as bamboo to accurately convey information to younger audiences.
Clear and accessible
Kid-friendly
Unbiased
Rough hand-drawn sketches in Procreate
Branding
Technical Specs
The proof of concept is built in React and TypeScript.
Since we wanted to preserve user privacy while having the ability to save progress, we used IndexDB to persist state across sessions.
The interactive animations were made using SVGs and DOM elements.
UI/UX Main Pages
Home Screen
Gamified Path
Audio Practice
MC Questions
Prototype
Scan the QR Code with your phone!
We won!
Sprout won 1st place at RDV Hacks in New York, as well as Best Social Impact App by MLH Hacks, the RDV team, and multiple judges. While we're excited about educational technology, it goes without saying there are multiple challenges but also opportunities for growth.
Challenges we ran into
Animating DOM elements in an interactive manner in React is difficult, especially when taking mobile browsers and touch-first interfaces into consideration. If I were to remake this project I would use the Unity API to create the interactive bits more efficiently.
Due to the project's small scope and the 24-hour hackathon timeframe, we couldn't gather feedback from a sufficient number of young students or teachers. Given the sensitivity of sex education, involving doctors and psychologists is crucial to ensure the product's safety before young students can test it.
Room for Growth
Counselor hotlines, question and answer bots, and birth control and menstruation trackers are all features that could be easily incorporated into the app to increase access to necessary health resources. It's also important to consider students with disabilities such as visual or hearing impairments to ensure it's an inclusive tool.