Context
Streamline Student Assignment Management within a complex platform
Some parts of this case study are only brief overviews to preserve the company's confidentiality.
Roles & Timeline
As a Product Designer in an Edtech company, I worked on a digital workspace for schools. It enables students, parents, teachers, and school staff to communicate with each other, manage school life, and create and exchange educational content. I worked mainly with the Squad Product Manager. The Product Director and other stakeholders were involved in the decisions. This project lasted from December 2023 to February 2024.
Challenges
Many teachers may be resistant to digital tools or lack digital skills, and some children do not have easy access to IT equipment. Therefore, I worked with the Product team to identify user problems and determine which issues to prioritize in homework organization: facilitating document collection and grading for teachers, or making it easier for students to create and submit assignments?
Users were getting lost in a platform with many apps, so I had to design a simpler experience, considering that they have at least five apps to manage assignments. Therefore, our Product team needed to define the project scope and direction: Should we redesign one app, create a new central app, or merge several apps? A discovery phase was necessary.
Design process
I. Understanding and defining the problem
Secondary research to capitalize on internal knowledge
As a new recruit on this project, I began with secondary research and internal interviews to identify the facts, hypotheses, and remaining questions.
Key findings
Analysis of strenghts and weaknesses of apps:
1. Rack app allows users submit homework or documents for 1st and 2nd degree schools.
🟢 Well-known by users and very simple to use
🔴 Lacks essential features such as file organization and batch downloads.
2. Exercice app lets teachers create and send interactive tests.
🟢 Covers numerous needs, including templates for homework topics, assignment scheduling, tracking, and centralization.
🔴 Lacks visibility and is complex due to the abundance of features.
Other apps used but not optimised for assignment management:
- The Mailbox does not allow centralization or tracking of documents.
- The Homework Notebook app does not enable collection of documents.
- In the Files Space app, students can see assignments that others have shared with the teacher.
Analysis of exiting quantitative data:
The existing data is too macro and does not sufficiently explain usage patterns, so assumptions need to be confirmed. For example:
- We found that the Rack app is much more used than the Exercise app in middle and high schools. Is it primarily for assignments or for other use cases?- The Rack app is also used by school staff in elementary schools. Is it mainly used for administrative documents in these schools?
Surveys to identify macro trends
At this point, we aimed to validate macro assumptions, identify trends in document types, applications used, use cases, and common issues among users.
Key findings
- The Rack app is widely used, but, like other apps, there is no dominant app for assignment management; practices vary significantly from teacher to teacher.
- There are no predominant types of materials (images, audio, written documents) exchanged.
- The survey confirmed that some staff use the Rack app for administrative documents (e.g., parental permissions)
Some questions remain: How do teachers assign homework? Are instructions provided? What actions do they take?...
User Interviews to gain in-depth understanding
I interviewed five middle and high school teachers, three elementary school teachers, and one high school student to understand how they use the apps and their pain points within the classrooms and on the platform. I synthesized the key findings into personas and experience maps.
Key findings
- The user flow begins with preparing the homework topic and ends with redistributing the corrected assignment to students. However, some teachers prefer to correct assignments with students in the classroom, while others do so both digitally and in person. The Product team needs to decide whether to include this final stage in our solution.
- Some needs were confirmed, and others discovered. For example, teachers need to communicate before and after deadlines, control cheating, make frequent reminders about due dates, and do batch actions (e.g., downloading, printing).
- Students increasingly use their phones rather than computers for digital homework (e.g., recording audio for language classes, checking instructions). We decided with the Product Manager to prioritize a 'mobile-first' approach for the student experience.
- In France, elementary schools are not allowed to assign written homework. I suggested designing a solution specifically for middle and high shcools only.
- The majority of teachers use a competitor app for assigning homework. Therefore, I suggested not relying on our Homework Notebook app for this use case.
II. Solutions ideation and convergence
Internal workshops to diverge and converge
I organized workshops with the Product team to collect divergent solution ideas, such as:
- Creating a new app, central and dedicated to these use cases
- Overhauling and renaming the Exercise app to 'Assignment'
- Redesigning the Rack app
- Redesigning the Homework Notebook app and integrating it with another app
- Merging the Rack and Files Space apps"
Then, using the UX research findings and the Discovery Discipline method (by Tristan Charvillat & Rémi Guyot), we defined the 'First Use Case' (the problem) and voted on the main direction to pursue.
Takeaways
We chose to overhaul the Rack app to capitalize on existing use cases. The update includes:
- Creating a solution for exchanging administrative documents between teachers, students, school staff, and parents.
- Enabling organized document collection while maintaining the ability for spontaneous document sharing.
- Moving and improve a key feature for assignment tracking from the Exercise app to the Rack app.
Competitive moodboard to draw inspiration
I created a moodboard with screenshots from competitors to gather inspiration for features, layouts, and UI elements. I also identified some 'steal nuggets,' as suggested by the Discovery Discipline method.
III. Prototyping the Rack app overhaul
Converting user needs into a list of features
Based on the UX research findings, I transformed user needs into a list of main features and sub-features.
Takeways
This list helped me to:
- Identify the core features to prototype and prioritize them (e.g., creating and sending assignment topics, receiving materials, tracking progress) over secondary features (e.g., scheduling homework delivery, batch correction). This also guided their placement in layouts and workflows.
- Validate the solution overview with the Product Manager, distinguishing between existing, improved, and new features. The update mainly involved improvements, with the only new feature being the conversational element.
- Create a tracking table for each part of the solution throughout the prototyping iterations.
Redefinition of user flows, Wireframing and Mockup
To streamline the 'Job to be Done' and address usability issues, I redefined the user flows for each feature, outlining user goals and steps. Then, I created low- and high-fidelity wireframes and tested different screen layouts and navigation through mockups.
For example, to simplify navigation for the 'Consult and Submit Assignment' feature for students, I initially tried an 'expand/collapse' layout but ultimately favored a 'tab navigation' with fewer tabs for better responsiveness.
IV. Promising outcomes from user testing
User recruitment and Assumptions testing
I had a short deadline to recruit users and conduct tests. I focused on our main hypotheses and concerns:
- Are the primary user problems addressed? Is the student effectively guided through submitting assignments?
- Is it easy for teachers to collect and centralize students' assignments?
- Does the 'Document Collecting' feature integrate well with 'Spontaneous Document Submission'?
- Is the reminder feature visible and aligned with teachers' practices?
Presentation of results and Incorporation of user feedback
It was important to inform the Product team that the main user flows were successfully realised and well-received by testers, including those unfamiliar with the platform. Only minor adjustments are needed, such as deprioritizing batch corrections and providing more options for reminder scheduling.
Results & learnings
A solution meeting user's needs
A centralised experience for teachers
To maintain simplicity in a solution that is multi-functional and flexible (handling both administrative documents and homework, whether exchanged spontaneously or organized into collections):
- I created empty screens explaining the purpose of each feature.
- With the Product Manager, we recommended a tab layout with illustrated tabs to visually separate the app’s two main sections (the rack for spontaneous exchanges vs. collections for organized exchanges).
- I suggested allowing users to choose their type of exchange, enabling us to adapt features and the user experience accordingly.
To help the teacher quickly see the progress of their collection and prioritize tasks, I added tracking indicators and badges.
Documents collection is now centralized and the app remains simple to use despite the coexistence of two main features, thanks to optimized navigation and UI elements like illustrated tabs, segmented controls for 'To monitor' vs. 'Done,' and cards.
To make creating and sending assignments quicker and simpler, we decided with the PM to relocate certain features and make their optional status more visible.
To improve the document tracking table, I deleted, rearranged, and rephrased information to display only the essentials for the teacher.
A 'mobile first' and 'multimedia' experience for students
To ensure a responsive experience, we decided with the Product Manager to use a tab layout, allowing students to easily navigate and submit their homework. A stacked layout would likely hide the submit button (below the fold), making it less accessible.
The user interviews revealed that teachers and students need to communicate before the due date to clarify expectations or guide students before final submission. Therefore, I added a comment component to address this need.
The user interviews revealed that teachers required more than just text-based homework. They needed to add multimedia files and record sounds and videos. Consequently, we decided to emphasize the functionality for adding media files and recording audio and video.
Learnings as Product designer
Even though the project was complex, it was a key learning experience for me. For example
- Discovery Phase: Reflecting on it, I would approach some actions differently. Following more rigorously to the Discovery Discipline method could have facilitated team convergence and collective validation at each step.
- Solution Presentation: I learned to present various solutions and their key concerns enabling me to recommend a well-informed solution to the Product Manager.
- Understanding EdTech Users: Gaining insights into the teaching profession greatly improved my understanding of users' needs in EdTech.
- Responsive Design: I learned the importance of integrating responsive design early in the process to ensure an optimal solution for a responsive web app.
