The challenge.

Overview.

Edukit is a wellbeing app for students that provides insights to the teachers and school by students’ surveys, the app then provides bespoke resources, allocated by the school to the student, such as videos, articles or websites, to help them maintain their wellbeing and deal with problems like bullying, anxiety etc.

The app was launched as an MVP a week before I was called to help EduKit with the UX/UI of the app.

My process.

In order to understand where we’re going, we need to look back sometimes, I used user-centred Design best practices together with the Lean UX process to validate and explore the way.

Empathising.

Because I was called to consult after the app was live, I wanted to look into Nathalie’s research and her motives to launch the app. I also talked to parents and school kids to get more insights on schools to approach students wellbeing.

Interviews.

Understanding the business needs while advocating for the users was one of the key goals, to do so I reviewed all the interviews done by the Edukit team in the early discovery phase and talked to key stakeholders in the team to understand

After reading all the interviews with schools staff and students, using affinity mapping I got some great trends and common pain points, this helped me later to establish my hypothesis and problem statement.

Key insights- schools staff.

Communication- schools needed a better way to communicate with the student other then emails or calls to the parents because by talking to the parents you don’t always get the right input.

Tracking- schools needed a better way to track the support they provide, for the process to be self-managed and for the support to be quicker.

They needed a simpler and easier way to identify issues with students.

Schools would like the students to take ownership on their wellbeing as a way of living. (motivation to use the app)

Key insights- Students.

95% of students have concerns about their wellbeing.

70% of students will share resources with their peers to help them deal with wellbeing issues.

Most Students use online content to care for their wellbeing.

There is a lot of concern regarding the content they see online. “content can be very inspirational from one hand but can be very toxic from the other.”   

Student would like to take ownership on their wellbeing.

as I mentioned, after going through the interviews I also talked to the key stakeholders, Their insights and takes on the direction of the app and their motives to develop it helped me to understand how can I help and to better clarify the direction to take.

Key insights from stakeholders.

Schools needed a better way to communicate with the student other then emails or calls to the parents because by talking to the parents you don’t always get the right input.

Schools have a problem tracking the support they provide to students.

They don’t identify issues with students fast enough.

Schools would like the students to take ownership on their wellbeing as a way of living.  

Bussines KPI’s

Competitor analysis.

We hardly ever inventing the wheel as a designers, by looking at what is out there we can understand what our users expect, see what works well for them and what not, so we can better build our product.

I looked at direct competitors like the childline app “For Me” and indirect competitors like “Headspace”.

From all the data gathered I could create a persona to better identify with the users

As the group age of users for the app is big and differentiate a lot in cognitive ability, I created 2 persona groups.

Current app Audit.

After understanding the user’s needs, to learn more about the current app, an audit on and to set a benchmark to measure the improvement of UX from the changes we will implement, an audit of the app was necessary.

Going through the research process was helpful in understanding the product and business direction and in turn gave the stakeholders understanding of the process.

Define.

How can we know if the product to be successful? how can we know we are solving real problems?

That’s where the use of all the insights from the research comes in handy!

Together with the problem statement, I created a user journey to show the optimal flow of our persona in the app to achieve its goals.

Problem statement.

Using our persona, empathising with him and crafting the problem statement.

Jack (persona) have difficulty finding reliable resources and inspiration regarding his wellbeing. 

He needs a better way to communicate, find resources and get inspiration.

That way he will feel less stressed and more relaxed in general, be able to concentrate better on his study and take ownership of his well being.  

Hypothesis.

We believe that by developing an app that collects data from students about their well-being, through surveys and other questionnaires. 

We would be able to help schools/teachers identify students with issues much faster, they can then allocate in-app resources and self programs to students, so they can take ownership of their wellbeing. 

By doing so they will share the app and help other students to support their well-being. 

Design.

At this stage I had an understanding of what students are expecting to see and what schools need to have on the app. That allowed me do consider the features on the app and the general look. I began prototype on paper and then moved to low fidelity on XD to make it clearer to the team.

Low Fidelity on XD Explained.

We came together to a mini design studio when everyone presented his designs and we iterated on the best ones to move forward with. I then began to design the mid-fidelity prototype of the app.

Clickable (Mid-Fid) prototype.

Success metrics.

1. We will see the number of app downloads increasing.

2. we will see good reviews on the app and android store, this will also provide important feedback.

3. we will see time spend in-app increasing.

4. we will see low “Time on task”, low user error rates. These are directly related to UX and provides insights into the screen flow and if users are abandoning the app frustrated.

5. The task success rate will be high.

6. The user satisfaction rate is increasing. 

7. User interviews will give us in-depth insight into user behaviour.

What I learned.

From the process- It was the first time I took ownership of a UX process, I learned first-hand why it is important to bring the stakeholders on board from the beginning, how to manage them and to keep them in the loop.

From the design -I presented my design but eventually due to constraints of time and money, I implemented the changes into the current design. it is important to plan for the unexpected and to define clear goals.

Moving forward- Edukit team now have a comprehensive look at the app and research, if and when they’ll decide to move forward, they have all they need ready.

• Research shows that It is optimal to design the app for several groups age in different ways, but that could take a lot of time and resources, I suggested solving this by implementing onboarding screens to explain the functionality of the features in the app and implementing certain “help” features or “hints” for younger kids. Given time I would like to explore this further and ideat on the best way to do that. 

*Unfortunately due to certain limitations beyond my control, the stakeholders decided not to continue with the development of the app.