Tutorpedia App Design

Challenge:

Design an application focused on helping students connect with tutors who are qualified to help them with their individual specific needs.

Solution:

Tutorpedia is an application that helps students find tutors that can help them with their specific needs.

Research

Who is our target audience?

What is an easy an effective way to get students be able to contact and connect with qualified professionals?

How can we align schedules in a way that makes it convenient for both tutors and students?

As the UX Researcher, I went through many different research methodologies to collect data that would answer each of our research goals.

1. Interviews : I conducted 8 interviews with students ranging from 18-21.

I feel so close to giving up on my dreams because I am hopeless". - Participant 1

2. Surveys : We conducted a survey from a different group of participants and the results are as shown below.

  • 76% of students considered themselves to be a '“failure” if they didn’t understand a certain subject or concept.

  • 43% hesitated to reach out to the teacher if they did not understand the concept.

  • 52% expressed desire to have external help whether through (online videos/ tutors/ etc.)

  • 57% were available after school hours for help in their subjects.

“ I’m probably the dumbest in my class, since I can’t seem to grasp concepts as quickly as my classmates.” - Participant 5

Many students reported to feel stressed and anxious due to falling behind in classes, and feeling less worthy than their classmates who seemed to not be struggling as much as them.

Insights

Students were a bit hesitant in asking for extra help from peers/teachers if they were having a hard time, but less hesitant when external help was involved.

Students are more flexible with after-school hours on weekdays, and any time during the weekends.

My role : Lead UX Designer

I also created personas to help better understand the struggle the students were facing.

Competetive Audit

Conducting a competitive audit on a few competitor’s products provided guidance and direction on gaps and opportunities to address with the Tutorpedia app. 

Ideation

I used the Crazy Eight’s method to identify some key features needed in this desktop website. My focus was easy user flow, simple navigation, and less clutter. 

Digital Wireframes

After ideating and drafting many paper wireframes, I started creating the initial designs for the Tutorpedia application. These designs focused on helping the user schedule a session easily and efficiently without being overwhelmed by too much information being presented to them.

Usability Studies

Once I had created a low-fidelity wireframe, and had connected my screens, it was now time to test with my users. Here is some information about the Usability Study that I had conducted. 

Study type: Moderated Usability Study

Location: Chicago, IL (Main Office) 

Participants: 8-9

Length: 15-20 minutes  

Main Findings

  1. Users want to be able to navigate easily throughout the app and not be confused about where the flow is taking them

2 . Users want to see many options for tutors, but also need to be able to filter out certain qualities of tutors. 

3 . Users would like to have an option for subjects, so instead of having to check every tutors skilled subjects, they can have a filter option for subjects. 

4. Unnecessary feature of availability asking twice, instead of just once. 

5.No way for users to contact tutor about specifications of dates and timings. 

Re-designing Mockups

  1. Based on my findings, I improved my design like adding options for filtering out locations and availability.

2. Users also wanted flexibility of meet-up locations. For them to be online and also in-person.

Design Mistake

Before users would choose available date and timings after selecting “Schedule Tutor” and if the dates and times would not match up, they would have to go back again in their user flow and find another tutor who would match up with the student’s desired date and timing. 

To combat this, I made an option in the filters for specific days the student would like to meet 

And, had the tutors available day and timings listed along with their profile. That way, before the student clicked “Schedule a Session” they can figure out whether their schedules aligned with the tutors.

Before

After

Accessibilty Considerations

  1. Interactive elements can be read by screen readers.

  2. Clear, big, easy to read text

  3. Helps define primary action for user with reccomendations.

Final Designs

After designing a high-fidelty prototype and making many changes to the app, I connected the screens.