ESERO is the Educational Resources Office of the European Space Agency.
This educational project is led in Spain by the Parque de las Ciencias de Granada and collaborates with educational institutions at both the national and regional levels.
Starting point
ESERO Spain’s office was established in Spain in October 2017.
Between October 2018 and October 2021, I worked as freelance consultant as designer on various aspects of its communication strategy with the aim of increasing the number of participants in ESERO activities.
The goal was to reach the maximum number of teachers and build loyalty by showcasing ESERO materials as useful and engaging resources for their students.
Work areas
- Social media
- UX Design
- Email campaings
- Online learning
- Digital consultancy
Social media
ESERO Spain has A social media profile, Twitter, created in May 2017. By October 2018, it had 48 followers.
The strategy pursued throughout was to build a niche social media presence, focusing on organic growth through the creation of high-quality content, genuine interaction with the audience, the proper use of relevant hashtags, and authentic profile promotion.
The account’s activity was monitored using Welovroi. By the end of studied period, ESERO Spain’s profile approached 1500 followers.
ESERO Spain had become the profile with the highest
number of followers among all ESERO offices.
UX Design
With the aim of ensuring scalable growth, a website redesign was proposed, focusing on:
- Defining the communication objectives.
- Conducting an initial website audit.
- Updating visual design.
- Improving user experience design.
- Designing and defining a content structure oriented towards SEO.
- Ensuring compatibility with all types of browsers and devices.
The design was proposed with three objectives:
- Increasing the number of registrations from Spanish schools in ESA competitions.
- Boosting the number of downloads for ESA-ESERO resources.
- Promoting awareness of the agenda for in-person activities and training sessions (online training sessions were not implemented until 2020).
ESERO generated news related to these three points that were important to feature in a blog.
The four types of content (Competitions, Resources, Activities and News) are always interconnected by four workstreams: Space exploration, Exoplanet detection, Spacecraft engineering, Earth observation.
ESERO Spain experienced rapid growth during these 3 years and new types of content were integrated, demonstrating the scalability of the system.
The solution was to design a custom theme in WordPress that allowed for easy linking of the elements through a suitable structure of categories and tags.
The website went from 300 to 30,000 monthly users.
Downloads began to be monitored during the pandemic, rising from 247 downloads/month in March 2020 to 1496 downloads/month in October 2021.
The online training sessions facilitated the increase in participation and dissemination of ESERO’s content.
In October 2021, over 200 Primary, Secondary, and High School teachers participated in 8 online STEAM 60’ sessions and 3 in-person sessions through the Educational Innovation projects in the communities of Andalusia, the Canary Islands, and Castilla y León.
The participant database for training sessions reached over 2000 users.
Email campaings
The increase in ESERO’s activity and its followers necessitated a communication tool for the monthly activities of both ESERO Spain and ESA events relevant to the educational community.
Within the ESERO team, I was responsible for:
- Adapting texts about the content suggested by the ESERO team.
- Designing and formatting the newsletter.
- Managing databases.
- Programming and managing the dispatch through the platform (initially MailChimp and later MailerLite).
The first newsletter was sent in August 2020 to 334 subscribers, marking the launch of ESERO’s activities for the 2020-21 academic year. It was sent via MailChimp and had an open rate of 68.8% and a click-through rate of 17.1%.
The last newsletter of this period was sent in October 2021 through MailerLite to 1441 subscribers, with an open rate of 45.68% and a click-through rate of 11.88%.
Online learning
As a consequence of the COVID-19 pandemic, ESERO training sessions were suspended starting March 11, 2020.
STEAM 60’ comprises one-hour online training sessions initiated in September 2020 to continue providing necessary training to educators for implementing ESERO resources and challenges in educational institutions.
STEAM 60’ training sessions cover various ESERO topics:
- General concepts: Introduction to the ESERO project.
- Primary School competitions: A view of the challenges focused on Primary School courses.
- Challenges: CanSat, Climate Detectives, MoonCamp, Mission X, AstroPi.
- Earth Observation.
- Exoplanet Detection.
- EO Browser.
- Ellas inspiran STEAM.
The training sessions are managed through a reservation system implemented with Calendly, allowing for registration as well as the management of confirmation, reminder, and cancellation emails.
The sessions are conducted via the Zoom platform, occasionally utilizing YouTube for the publication of some sessions on the ESERO Spain channel.
Digital consultancy – Space Troopers
One of the challenges for ESERO Spain is covering lower educational levels since the lack of consolidated literacy makes it difficult to create direct materials for students, requiring a focus on teacher guides.
The Space Troopers project aims to address the initiation stage in the first and second grade of Primary Education.
The focal point of the project is the Space Troopers App, developed by Academons.
As Product Designer, I was responsible for the conceptualization of the app and the coordination and supervision of teams involved in the project to ensure a functional, efficient and attractive digital product:
- ESERO Content Team.
- Academons Content Team.
- Design Team.
- Programming Team.
In the application, through more than 70 interactive activities spread across 4 missions, students, working in teams, must achieve a total of 12 badges and 12 items to complete their own lunar camp.
The game is designed to be completed as a team, and the topics covered in the mobile application are complemented by 4 educational guides, one for each mission, and a materials kit to work on the contents.
Registration in the application was organized by school, and an annual league system was established.
Xelo Soriano 