Problem Statement

Parents need to minimize the time it takes to find a new school where their children will thrive and get an excellent education. We had three weeks to discover, define, ideate and design a product solution from the ground up.

Objective and Goals

To reduce the amount of time it takes for parents to research and find the right school for their child(ren)
To increase the quality of information processed by parents when searching for a school for their child(ren)

My Process

Discover

Competitive analysis

I compared five different companies in the same domain space. The comparison allowed me to better understand each company's strengths and weaknesses by determining key user features that needed to be improved or were missing entirely. Key takeaways from the analysis included:

Majority of domain spaces for the companies were highly dated both in functionality and looks
Most were confusing to navigate on and had limited options to compare different schools
All but one company had a mobile option

User Research Guide

After analyzing the competitors, I drafted an interview guide to gain an understanding of the various factors that parents consider when researching and selecting schools for their child(ren). After writing the user interview guide, I sourced users aligned with my target audience. I was then able to schedule in-person user interviews and gather data that allowed me to identify common themes amongst user experiences.

Affinity Diagram

After finishing six user interviews, I synthesized the data into an affinity diagram. Doing so allowed me to pinpoint functionality issues and what factors mattered most to parents when researching schools for their child(ren). Next, I organized the information into a more manageable empathy map. The top user themes identified included.

High-quality education is the parent's primary concern.
Parents start the process of researching schools extremely early.
The curriculum and teaching styles with which teachers and administrators interact with children matter to parents.
Parents complained about how difficult the process is to research and compare area schools.

Empathy Map

Once I had organized all the information gathered from the affinity diagram I was able to reduce it even further. This allowed me to capture the "true user" and identify the influences, pain points, and tasks involved in selecting a school for their child(ren).

Define

Persona

After clearly defining the users' needs, I was able to create a user persona. User personas highlight user needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals to guide the ideation process. A robust ideation process will enhance the user experience for the target audience.

User needs

I identified the "true users," I defined their needs by creating a "jobs to be done” chart to introduce a stable strategy of organizing the task into a single platform for both a website and mobile application. The "jobs to be done" chart allowed me to systematically capture all the users' needs related to the core functional job and identify growth opportunities.

Minimize the time it takes to find a new school where there children will thrive and get an excellent education
Maximize the quality of information one gets when searching for a new school where there children will thrive and get an excellent education
Increase your children's involvement in selecting there next school to ensure they get the amazing education they deserve.

Features & Functionalities

Once I had clearly defined the users' most critical needs, I was able to start work on the MOSCOW matrix to plan which features to include in the prototype. I organized features into the categories of: "must-have," "should have," "could have," and "won't have." This approach allowed me to address user concerns in the most efficient way possible.

ideate

Rapid sketches

Next, I sketched several possible solutions to crucial user problems. I drew every idea that came to mind, no matter how ridiculous it seemed. By doing so, I generated a wide variety of potential solutions to ideate from. Below are a few samplings of my rapid sketching process.

I wanted to maintain a simple header with an easy to understand body that users could easily access the information they needed.

Most parents have specific requirements when looking for a school for their children. I wanted them to be able to easily access unique filter options.

I wanted the user to be able to still see the map when editing the sort and filter options and now have to go to a whole new page as to cut down on confusion and extra steps.

User Flow Diagram

After completing the rapid sketches, I moved forward with the most minimalistic layout to make the design more effortless for the user to navigate. Next, I recreated the sequence of steps users generally implemented when researching area schools. The recreation process allowed me to streamline the steps required to complete user tasks and troubleshoot pain points, resulting in significant time-saving improvements.

User Task: From the home page user should search for schools in their area and filter by desired criteria, then select their top choices to compare and then schedule a meeting with their top school choices.

User Test Plan

I chose the rapid sketch sequence that aligned with the least complicated user flow. Next, I developed a user test plan to validate the design decisions by introducing consistency to the prototype testing process.

Mid Fidelity Prototype

Once the user test plan was completed, I scaled up the chosen rapid sketches to a mid fidelity prototype. This prototype, paired with my user testing plan, validated my design decisions and allowed me to make adaptations to the prototype based on user feedback. My goal was to ensure users could easily schedule a tour at the school of their choice, with the capabilities of organizing multiple times at different locations if the user so chooses.

User Testing Results

After testing the mid fidelity prototype, I synthesized the feedback and internalized what the users liked and disliked. These results enabled additional improvements to the final design. It is worth noting that:

Users 1 and 4 were 30-35 years of age
Users 2 and 3 were 55-60 years of age

Design

Style Tiles

After final adjustments were made to the prototype based on user testing results, I was able to start scaling the prototype up to high fidelity. I needed to develop a consistent design language that included color choice and fonts to scale up successfully. My goal was to instill a sense of trust and calmness in my design. I wanted to make the user feel less stressed and welcomed.

High fidelity screens

Once I chose a design language, I applied it to the high fidelity prototype screens. I placed high importance on design language consistency to ensure the prototype was easy to navigate in a timely manner.

High fidelity annotations

The final step was to annotate the high fidelity screens to prepare for hand-off to the coding team. Annotations are essential measures to ensure clarity of the design and mitigate confusion when being handled by multiple people.

Reflection

Things that I would have done differently.

Tested my prototype on users that were more aligned with my user base
Tested multiple different low fidelity prototypes to ensure the one I decided on was in fact the best one.

Outcomes

Through my thorough user interviews and user prototype testing I was able to address a couple of key pain points the users were having that being:

Being able to compare important key aspects across multiple different schools of their choice
Having the option to schedule an in person tour for both parents and kids
Parents were able to save their top school choices to their favorites for later reference

All of which allowed the parents to use there time productively and in the end save them valuable time.

​