A simple to use web app that will help parents find highly qualified tutors around the world thanks to an accessible filtering system. A couple of elaborated features that should help the user to choose the suitable tutor profile such as profile saving, chat, simple trial call booking system to support conversion rates. Access to tailor made learning materials and activities should ensure retention and differentiation with the competition. The app should be children friendly in order to help youngsters identify with it and build trust among parents.
The design process is made of iterations around different phases of the project building. The process is described in each parts of the case study as you can see below: 1. Understand & observe, 2. Identification & ideation, 3. Prototyping, 4. Testing, 5. Improvements & iterations. All along the project, it was more and more evident how important it was to operate back and forth between stages of design. Even if it could feel in the beginning that time was lost (e.g. improving user flows instead of improving the design), in the long term it helped to not loose track of the user tasks and goals.
To build a competitive product that would offer online lessons in French languages for kids, it is important to have qualified experts on board that could produce interesting and educational content for parents and children. Experts should be verified thanks to references. The platform should have an online lesson space to allow tutors to upload content or invite the user to collaborate. The marketing strategy should aim at targeting audiences in specific areas and institutions such as public or private schools, kindergartens and so on.
Based on the gathered information and the insights that came out from the analysis, it was time to build the profile of our main users. As parents and tutors were interviewed, I created 2 personas: Joanna and Anne. The first is a language aware mother and the second is an experienced French tutor. These documents outlined that users need a flexible tool that is children friendly and that connects users quickly to competent experts. It became clear that design should reflect these statements.
Before starting to work on the wireframes, it was important to understand the steps that were required for users to achieve their goals. Based on the information gathered we created 3 flows that would illustrate the main decisive tasks that an user has to perform in order to be satisfied with what the app has to offer. It was important to keep in mind all the pain points that a user might face and offer as many routes as possible in order to leave them as much as possible control over the app. Find and Contact flow show how a parent can make an informed decision and connect with an expert. The tutor flow is here to illustrate how could be guaranteed their success when creating a profile on the app. Finally, the Service blueprint shows how KidzSpeak could be integrated within a school for parents that require language support for their children.
With the path clearly defined, it was time to start building the first screens with a pen on paper. It helped to roughly visualize how the user would navigate through the different features of the app. The filtering feature for instance was difficult to introduce. Several iterations helped to devote a tab to it. The idea was to keep everything accessible and visible for the user. Mid-fidelity and high fidelity prototypes helped first to confirm (even if later on it was abandoned) this design decision as the process seemed efficient and covering the user needs that were identified previously.
Testing the high fidelity prototype helped us to see if users identify clearly the purpose of the app, understand how it works, navigate, complete core features and evaluate the app as a product they could use in the future. Several issues related to navigation, content, interface, information, etc. Among others here are some issues that were identified:
Thanks to the usability testing insights, started the improvement and iteration of the existing wireframes. Several new features were designed also in order to improve the overall experience of the app. Loading animations were introduced with the app's mascot, a more complete profile section and scheduling process. The filtering tab was removed and made accessible through a button on the result page. Several design rounds helped to polish the prototype even more in terms of simplicity and refinement. Peer reviews helped to isolate crucial issues related to hierarchy, alignment, etc. The current version has reached aesthetic integrity and an asserted identity.
We believe that the current state of the project reflects and covers the initial goals and problem that were defined at the beginning of the design process. KidzSpeak is an user friendly app, that aims at connecting highly specialized profiles in teaching to a young audience with parents that seek tutors for their child. The interface is simple in its navigation and structure with content that young people can identify easily. They should help the learner in reaching new language skills, but also in which they could find support and motivation to persevere in their journey. Tutors should benefit from the app as well and use it as a basis for their sessions. From here, the primary focus, aside development should be to find and engage with a short number, but highly qualified professionals in the area of teaching a foreign language to children.
Challenges:
The most challenging aspect of this project was to let research and data analysis speak instead of my personal intuition and instincts based on my personal knowledge and experience in the field of online teaching. It was interesting and reassuring to see that some assumptions I had were validated, but also that parents had particular concerns that I was not expecting. While at first I had the feeling that I was designing in a mist, progressively beacons appeared and started to guide me through the process thanks to the gathered and analyzed data.
Learned lessons:
I learned that it is important to have, as soon as possible, an organized library of components that can improve in time with the fidelity of the wireframes (if not working with ready to use UI kits). Iterations on the design can then only be simpler. Once confident that some elements of the design will be kept, it can be useful to start adding them progressively to style guide and design system documents.
