Edify
Grow through teacher-mentor collaboration
Edify increases teacher access to mentorship by removing school hour and placement constraints. Educators can schedule meetings with mentors and target specific growth areas.
Project Type
End-to-end UX/UI design
Tools
Figma
Duration
2 months
My Role
Solo product designer
User Research
Wireframing
Protoyping
User Testing
Grouping common themes by opportunities and gaps
I then used affinity mapping to analyze and make sense of the data collected from my user interviews. I organized and grouped the insights and responses by common themes:
Talking to users confirmed that mentorship played a big role in teacher development and satisfaction!
Although my user research yielded several themes, I ultimately decided to limit the scope of my app to promoting accessible mentorship. This allowed me to prioritize intentionality and quality rather than focusing on quantity.
The target audience can be categorized into 3 archetypes:
With the findings derived from my user interviews, I created 3 personas and 2 empathy maps that would encompass the majority of the target audience. These personas addressed two distinct characteristics of my target users: years of experience and motivation.
Veteran teacher looking to improve practices
Novice teacher starting with a blank slate
Veteran teacher teaching a new course
Converting insights and pain points into user flows
Based on the trends from my user research, I noticed that teachers greatly benefited from effective mentorship, but were often paired with mentors who they weren’t compatible with or couldn’t meet because of conflicting schedules. Thus, I mapped out user flows to address these struggles and increase accessibility to a variety of mentors.
Converting flows to paper sketches
Now the fun began: I used my user flows and site map to inform my decisions as I created paper sketches. These prevented me from spending too much time focusing on the visuals, and instead allowed me to prioritize addressing initial design flaws.
1st round of testing—A flawed success
I created an initial prototype using the Marvel app and tested 5 users: although there were minor issues with visualization due to the drawn nature of the prototype, all users were eventually able to complete all assigned tasks. However, there were some tweaks made using suggestions and feedback from users.
Polishing the screens
I moved on to creating wireframes in Figma, incorporating user feedback that I received during guerrilla testing. To save time and maximize productivity, I used wireframe kits to develop high-fidelity wireframes quickly. This allowed me to create clean wireframes in a short amount of time for user testing.
2nd round of testing: Testing the new prototype
To further refine the user experience, I put the new prototype through 2 more rounds of user testing: the first round consisted of previous interviewees from guerrilla testing and the second consisted of 5 new participants.
Opportunity: Increase conversion
Opportunity: Additional filters
Opportunity: Increase visibility
3 Major Design Improvements
To further refine the user experience, I put the new prototype through 2 more rounds of user testing: the first round consisted of previous interviewees form guerrilla testing and the second consisted of 5 new participants.
2
Filter by availability
Reduce clutter and cognitive load by allowing users to filter by availability right in the filters section rather than making it a separate process
Conversion during onboarding
Users are now recommended mentors right after onboarding to streamline the process and increase conversion via scheduled sessions.
1
3
Increased visibility
Schedule navigation icon is more prominent to direct users towards the main function of the app--meeting with mentor teachers
Result — A faster, more efficient process!
From the first round of user testing to the second, I concentrated on two factors: conversion rate and learning time. I used quantitative and qualitative observations to reach the following conclusions between the two iterations:
The Final Product
In Retrospect…
Don’t make assumptions:
This project taught me to never assume the user’s needs: I came into this project thinking that it would be quite straightforward. After all, I do have a background in education! Despite being able to adopt a teachers mindset, however, I quickly realized that my own experience was just one out of million’s. As I interviewed other teachers and conducted usability tests, I found that
Prioritize user testing:
Prioritizing user testing, research, and surveys helped me quickly better understand user behavior and improvements needed for designing an app from the ground up. The most drastic improvements to Edify came from user feedback!
Documentation:
Documenting user feedback, interviews, and changes would have helped me design in a more efficient process. Additionally, having these handy and organized would have greatly reduced the time spent on creating my case study and explaining my design choices.