The award administrators define categories and rubrics for each category, after that they announce the application call to all eligible schools. Then they send the paper application form for who are interested to apply.

The application form consists of many steps and long writing tasks. Sometimes the applicants want to attach media; like photos or videos to support their application, they usually attach a CD or flash drive, or sometimes stick photos in the application using glue. After receiving the applications, the assessors start the assessment for each application then, they schedule field visit to asses the qualified applicants at their schools, after the field assessment they choose the winners based on the overall assessment.

Starting the discovery phase with the stakeholder interviews, to understand the award process, the problems they want to solve, and define the objective and scope for this project.

This was challenging since the assessment looks easy but in fact it is too complex and they are using many excel sheets to finalize the assessment, this requires lot of time and efforts.

The next step is getting know the both types of users; applicants and assessors. By conducting user interviews to explore their thoughts, pain points and challenges, needs, and what are they expecting from this digital transformation.

The most of the users hope the new process will save them time and efforts whether assessors or applicants. We got useful insights from these interviews which was effective in the brainstorming and generating ideas.

We have explored multiple competitors worldwide, but our primary focus was on Middle East awards, particularly in the UAE.

The UAE stands out as one of the leading countries that highly values professionals in the educational sector, we have focused MBZ teacher awards which is considered one of the best in the region and they have the similar assessment rules.