Tutoring Scheduler
for parents on the go
Challenge
Create an application that lets parents manage their child’s tutoring on the go, without breaking a sweat.
Outcome
A simple scheduler that empowers parents to take care of their child’s tutoring all in one place.
Research & Insights
Before designing anything, it was incredibly important to map out the complete user journey in order to identify all user touchpoints. In addition, the user journey map below showcased the thoughts of the users as they progressed through the service. The thoughts revealed which steps were most important as a user.
They were: scheduling a tutoring session, communicating with their child's tutor, being informed about their child's progress during the session, and lastly, submitting payment for the sessions.
We then proceeded by observing and interviewing parents to understand how tutoring can best fit in the agenda of a parents. After a dozen interviews spanning the different groups, common themes within each group began to emerge and helped form the following personas. It's blatantly clear that being a parent is incredibly difficult and very demanding. In addition to being parents, most users were also full-time workers. As a result, parents always had a number of things to do and be preoccupied with such as: picking up the kids from work, taking them to after-school activities, cooking, shopping, and getting some rest & relaxation.
Design Principles
From our findings we created the following design considerations to guide our exploration into solutions.
Easy to Navigate: parents should be able to intuitively know where features and information are located
Low Number of Clicks: parents should be able to access any feature within one to two steps
Friendly: the app should provide a friendly and inviting environment for busy parents
Generating Concepts
How will the information be organized? Wire Mapping
To meet the “easy to navigate” and”low number of clicks” considerations, I first mapped out the features of the application. Mapping out the features enabled us to view how we can simplify the layout of the information and determine what features are absolutely necessary.
How to make the information easy to navigate? Low Fidelity Wire-Framing
How intuitive is this iteration? Low Fidelity Testing
Using printouts of the screens, users were asked to narrate how they would complete a series of tasks. Hearing the thought process of the users helped identify key areas that were still a bit confusing and could be better improved.
Specifically, the scheduling and billing sections. Users shared that they were not sure how to schedule or change a session. The icon placed for users to access this option was too small and abstract. Additionally, users shared they would rather see a written option instead of an icon. As for the billing section, users shared that they expected it to be easily located in the menu, not within another section.
Overall, users felt the overall quality of the concept was excellent and features made sense.
How can the interface be more inviting? Implementing Feedback
Based off user testing, there a number of opportunities to better the interface for users. The major ones were: making the process of scheduling a session more step-by-step, make options more obvious, and reduce the amount of unnecessary information.
Additionally, since our users are constantly having to work hard during the day, it might delight users to provide them an interface that is a bit more lively or fun. The challenge here would be having a fun interface that is still clear.
How can be make the app more lively? Color
Since clarity and ease of use are the main priorities, users should be able to tell differentiate each section of the app. This could easily be done by assigning a color each section of the app. Not only does this make each section more differentiated, it all so makes the user experience a bit more fun! The user experience is further enhanced through the introduction of small cartoons within the scheduling and profile pages. With additional time, these characters could be further flushed out and be added to each page.
Solution Delivery
And finally.. the Student Success Solutions scheduler for parents!
This application was designed to meet the following considerations inspired by our conclusions in our learning phase from parents.
Easy to Navigate: parents should be able to intuitively know where features and information are located
Low Number of Clicks: parents should be able to access any feature within one to two steps
Friendly: the app should provide a friendly and inviting environment for busy parents