Best School Choice
Research, Design Process, and User Solutions
Case Study
MOBILE APP
About the project
I was tasked with working through the entire UX and UI process for an imaginary client looking to understand how parents decide where to send their children to school and create a solution for that group of users.
Timeline
3 weeks
My Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma
Photoshop
Problem Statement
Parents looking at schooling options for their children need a resource to compare and contrast various schools’ offerings in order to make the best decision for their children.
Design Process
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Research
Affinity Mapping
Feature Prioritization (Should this go in define?)
Competitive Analysis
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Define
Personas/Empathy Map
Customer Journey Map
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Ideate
Wireframe
Low-Fidelity Prototype
User Testing
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Solution
Style Tile and Guide
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
Research
User Interviews and Affinity Mapping
The client provided 6 interviews with parents (the potential user group) about their process of selecting a school for their child/children. Questions asked uncovered what they did, why they did what they did, what they did and didn’t like about the process of school research and selection, and how it could have been improved.
From these interviews I extrapolated and categorized thoughts and feelings into an Affinity Map (see left) and concluded three major insights to move forward with in ideating a solution.
Insights
Price, location, curriculum, teaching style, and class size all factor into a parent’s decision when choosing a school for their child but ultimately, parents went with gut feelings after visiting in-person. All the data/research helped them narrow down which schools to visit.
Parents often seek outside opinions when choosing a school, but ultimately do the bulk work of research themselves.
Parents will often begin thinking about and researching schools years before the child attends, but will actually take less than a month to make the decision.
Research
Competitive Analysis
Three competitors (Niche, Our Kids, and Public School Review)that could potentially offer a solution to this group were analyzed to see what they were doing well, not so well, and where there was opportunity for our product to fill the needs they were not.
Strengths
Niche offered all schooling types Pre-K through Grad School with a large database of info
Our Kids was very specialized for parents looking for private schools
Public School Review was very specialized for parents looking for public schools
Weaknesses
Niche was the only service that offered a mobile app
Niche’s mobile app only included 2 and 4 year undergrad colleges, severely cutting down on the breadth of school data base their full website offers
Opportunities
Research indicated parents often times conducted their research while on the go, therefore a mobile app would be an excellent solution to gaps in the competitive market
Making sure mobile app offers as many schooling options as possible in order to have a leg up on the competition.
Empathize
Feature Prioritization
From the affinity map insights and looking at what features the competition was offering, I created a feature prioritization chart (below) to establish what would essential to include in the app.
I also created some jobs to be done quotes (right) from the perspective of potential users to ensure user end goals were always the focus for the rest of the project.
Must Have Features
Ability to compare schools
Ability to favorite schools/ user curated favorite list
Search feature with user ability to set parameters that curates a list of schools that user can filter
Each school’s individual detailed listing
Should Have Features
Site curated list of schools
Ability to contact schools to set up meetings
Place for users to put their own notes
Could Have Features
Calendar for users to see things like open houses
Map of schools
Blog posts to help guide users through their search
“When I’m overwhelmed by school options, I want an easy place to gather info clearly, so I can look at everything at once and eliminate the things I don’t need.”
“When I’m sure about a few schools, I want to contact the schools, so I can set up visits to narrow down my search further.”
“After I’ve visited schools, I want to put all the info I’ve gathered in the same place my research is, so I can have everything easily findable in one place.”
Ideation
Rapid Sketches and Low-Fi Mockup
Ideation
Usability Test
I chose to prototype a low fidelity mock up based on the sketches which I felt had the best opportunity to highlight the above mentioned prioritized features.
The low-fi mockup was then tested on two users, who were asked to complete an essential task. This task was selected again based on what the research data showed as top priority features.
Task: Compare four schools
100%
Task Completion
25-60 seconds
Task Completion Time
Test insights
Testers were very drawn to the “featured schools” section because there were “pictures/icons.” Both took that route when adding schools to compare and didn’t even bother using the search bar at the top, which was placed there because it was determined to be a top feature in the research. With this info, I recommended to make the top buttons on the home screen stand out more in the higher fidelity models using text, icons, and color so that users don’t just gloss over those options as well.
Solution
Style Tile and Guide
Once I knew the main features and layout were on course, it was time to decide on style. The style was chosen to reflect how respectable and serious parents feel this decision is. I wanted all the education options represented to feel equally important and prestigious - that way parents know, no matter which school they choose, they are making an excellent step toward their child’s future.
Solution
High-Fidelity Prototype
In the high-fidelity prototype there are some key points:
Main features right at the top showcase the solutions most likely to alleviate users pain points - search, favorite, and compare.
Relevant info about each school is shown based on what parents said factored into their decision in the user interviews. Location, price, type, grades offered, as well as class size, statistics, and extra cirriculars.
Compare feature will let users side by side see details of four schools they wish to compare. Users can filter info on and off such as class size, price, student demographics, etc. This eliminates user info overload, allowing parents to only see the info they want side by side.
Prototype
Test it yourself!
Recommendations
Additional testing
Due to time constraints, additional user testing was not conducted on final prototype. I believe this is essential to ensuring all the features function as needed before handoff to the development team.
Additional Features
While I included the most essential features for user satisfaction based on the research, I believe there are a few features that could be included in future phases that will add even more value to our product. These include
Calendar Feature
The research indicated parents did not chose a school on information alone, but final decisions came down to visiting the school. A calendar feature could show upcoming events and open houses that parents could join to proceed with that final “in-person” step of their decision making process.
Reviews
Many parents indicated they wanted opinions from outside sources to factor into their decision.While that mostly meant family and friends, having opinions from current and former students and parents will give even more insight to our users for their decisions.
Accessibility
Because this is just a prototype and not a fully functioning app, there are a few features that I would recommend the dev team adding that were not able to be shown in this prototype, such as sound effects and animations to indicate when a school is added to favorites or compare, so those using screen readers/with visibility needs know when the action has been performed successfully.