Encyclopedia Britannica · 2024 Prototype

Engage Reading.

A reading-tool prototype for K–8 informational texts. The SQRRR method — Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review — digitized into a step-by-step student flow.

Engage Reading — five iPhones showing the SQRRR walkthrough

The brief

Get students to actually engage with the text.

Students breeze past dense informational reading. They scroll the article, mark it complete, move on. Comprehension suffers; teachers triage the fallout.

The ask: a tool that forces attention to structure — the headings, the main ideas, the evidence — without it feeling like another worksheet.

My role

Sole UX, pedagogical lens.

Designed end-to-end as a prototype concept. Surveyed reading-instruction research, mapped the existing reading tools, drafted the flow.

The pedagogical lens carried it: as a former teacher, I knew SQRRR works. It lives in textbooks and classroom posters — but never quite lived in software. Could it?

The method

SQRRR, digitized.

Five steps, repeated for every section of an article. The student leaves with their own annotated study guide — built by reading.

01

Survey.

Preview the headings. Predict what the section is about.

02

Question.

Turn each subheading into a question. The student writes it.

03

Read.

Read the section with the question in mind.

04

Recite.

Answer the question — in own words, with text evidence.

05

Review.

All sections, all questions, all answers — one scrollable summary.

"Beyond user-friendly, beyond innovative — intentionally crafted to support teachers and enhance student learning."

— Design philosophy carried into every screen

04 — In action

One section, five steps.

Here's the prototype walking a 5th-grade Water polo lesson through the SQRRR loop. Each step is its own screen — the student can't skip ahead.

Step 01

Survey.

Read the headings. Predict what each section is about.

Step 02

Question.

Turn each heading into a question — in the student's own words.

Step 03

Read.

Read the section with the question held in mind. The structure of the text starts to do work.

Step 04

Recite.

Answer the question — in their own words, with text evidence the student must locate.

Step 05

Review.

All sections, all questions, all answers — one scrollable summary the student keeps.

— The full 8.5-minute walkthrough. Tap to play with sound; the audio explains the design choices as the student moves through the loop.

Five steps, repeated for every section of an article. The student leaves with their own annotated study guide — built by reading.

The walk-through, screen by screen

Step 1 — 01 — Lesson opens

Step 2 — 02 — Survey

Step 3 — 03 — Predict

Step 4 — 04 — Engage on

Step 5 — 05 — Ask a question

Step 6 — 06 — Question saved

Step 7 — 07 — Read the section

Step 8 — 08 — Find evidence

Step 9 — 09 — Answer in own words

Step 10 — 10 — Review summary

Ten screens, walking a single section of a Water polo lesson through the entire SQRRR loop. Repeated end-to-end, students leave with their own annotated study guide.

5steps

SQRRR digitized end to end

1prototype

Designed and prototyped

0shipped

Never used by the client

∞

Reasons that's still worth showing

05 — Reflection

What I learned.

The Engage prototype was beautifully crafted. Pedagogically sound. User-tested in spirit. It was never used.

Sometimes the right design lands at the wrong moment in a roadmap. I'm including it here anyway because the work is the work — and because the gap between "prototype that should ship" and "prototype that does ship" is its own design problem worth talking about.

What I'd do differently: ship a smaller version sooner. The full five-step SQRRR loop was the right destination, but a one-step version (just Question, shipped) would have proven the value to the team and made the bigger feature easier to fund.

© 2026 Rebekah Terry — built among the stars

IMAGINE · DESIGN · BUILD