The Challenge
Our team of three (UX Designer and Project manager) was responsible for creating an intuitive solution for educators to easily locate, view, search, share, schedule, and complete activities. Capturing data for the educator dashboard with streaks, badges, and optional notetaking.
The Team
Project Duration: 16 weeks
As a UX Consultant, my responsibilities for this project are the following:
Organize User Research and interview sessions
Conduct Usability Testing
Perform a Heuristics Evaluation
Sketching, Wireframe & Prototyping
Designing the "chosen activities page and survey page"
Process
During the Empathize phase, we invested significant time in understanding educators' experiences and needs through in-depth interviews and platform observations.
Our research objectives were to uncover the following:
How do we encourage educators feedback on the tasks and share their results?
Are educators able to navigate the current Kikori platform with ease to access eSEL activities?
Build rapport by understanding users' needs and expectations when engaging on the Kikori platform.
Understanding the Problem
Through in-depth qualitative research and interviews 6 educators, I uncovered the following critical pain points educators experienced using Kikori's platform to access eSEL activities:
Cell phones are prohibited for educators in classrooms
Educators have strict daily schedules
There is a lack of awareness of the existence of a Kikori mobile app. 50% of the users are using the webapp
Educators expressed no need for badges to continue using Kikori's platform
There are 2 types of users using the Kikori:
User 1: Prints out Kikori's activities calendar from the weekly Kikori emails, not using the mobile app and web app
User 2: Educators using the web app, printing/downloading the activity of their choice, and logging off
Research findings
Based on qualitative research insights, I understood educators often faced time constraints when using the Kikori platform. They required a fast, user-friendly method to access eSEL activities in 5 minutes or less and be on their way.
In the user interviews, educators also made it clear that they didn't need badges as an incentive to continue using the Kikori web app
Solution
I collaborated with my team to synthesize user interview insights into personas and user journey maps for Kikori's two distinct user types. Additionally, facilitated an affinity mapping session to identify educators' main pain points, frustrations, motivations, and needs with my team.
Using these insights, I created user flows and sketches depicting educators' interactions with Kikori's platform. Ideating in this design stage.
Design Direction
Our research led our design in the direction of:
Simplify the user experience and significantly reduce the cognitive load on educators using Kikori's platform
Educators are overwhelmed with the amount of options and amount of information provided to them when accessing activities
Provide educators an easy way to click/or tap the completed activities button and fill out a survey
Kikori can receive feedback on which activities are meeting educators' needs and improve their services.
Implementing intuitive navigation and a streamlined activity library to educators also consistently voiced the need for stronger customization options to modify activities and match them to their particular learning environments
Throughout our design process, I maintained ongoing communication with Kikori to provide transparency on key user insights from research. We shared educators' expressed needs around sharing, customization, and their perspectives on badges and incentives uncovered in interviews and testing
With our synthesized research, Kikori's leadership ultimately decided to develop badges and incentive features aimed
at driving platform engagement and retention. As a UX Consultant, focused on users' needs, I provided our insights to inform their strategic decision-making
Wireframes, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Working closely with the client, I identified the many project limitations impacting our work. I started the design process by creating lo-fi and mid-fi wireframes for the Kikori Web app with my team members. Designing closely to users' needs and Kikori's need for improvement of engagement and retention
I also conducted a heuristics evaluation and an accessibility review of the Kikori web app, iterated the designs throughout these stages, and tested them with users. Observing how educators can navigate the prototype, access the features, and listen to their pain points
Key takeaways
Design Solution
Based on user feedback, I streamlined the "selected activities page" design by reducing cognitive load and incorporating user-friendly tabs
This allowed the user to have the option to view relevant
information related to the activity of their choice
Results
Following the completion of our final designs, I worked collaboratively with my team to initiate the development handoff.
The feedback we received from Kikori executives indicates that our designs will serve as the foundational blueprint for the business to begin implementing badges into its platform.
Takeaways
Involve clients early in the research phase to share insights and key findings, building trust
This helps allow the client to understand the potential design they desire to implement into their product/services may not solve the underlying problem in their business model
After increasing the user base, measure KPI's in the following areas: task success rate, time of the task, length of the session, and user error rate
Iteration does not end after Usability Testing. Iterating on the designs can come after testing with multiple users to determine if the design solutions are meeting their needs along with the business goals
Project Restrictions/ Accessibility Guidelines. If the project did not have many constraints and restrictions, I would have designed closely to meet educators' needs by incorporating a user-friendly way to navigate the platform and a system to sync calendars and activities. Passing accessibility guidelines and meeting UX design standards