Edureka: an improved education technology experience

The design process for ideating Edureka, a one-stop shop for Jr. High School Administrators.

Conducting an industry research on the digital tools used by Jr. High School Administrators

In the last couple of years, education technology (also known as ed tech) has rapidly increased its demand, with 70% of American colleges expecting to launch online programs in the next three years.

On the other side, digital tools for Jr. High School administrators have been left behind by the market, which is a great opportunity to conduct an exploratory research on the industry.

This project was done during the Encora UX Apprentice Program, as a strategy to empower the acquisition of education technology clients by the company.

Oct - Nov 2022 (6 weeks)

High level goals

Putting on the researcher and designer hats

During this project, as a UX/UI Designer, I was responsible of conducting a complete iteration of research, ideation and design along with other 4 designers.

Communication and negotiation with the team of stakeholders was a key activity I also performed.

• Project planning.
• Planning, conducting and analyzing user research.
• Running ideation workshops.
• Designing wireframes and hi-fi mockups.
• Presenting findings and solutions to stakeholders.

Figma

Respondent

Defining research questions to delimit our scope

Who can answer our questions? Jr. High School administrators who use edtech

A set of characteristics of our target user base was defined in order to get the most relevant data:

Target user

We’re looking for...

• Principals and leadership roles in Jr. High Schools.
• Based in U.S.A.
• 35-50 years old
• Active user of an ed tech platform for at least 6 months.
• Plans and supervises content, classes and students using ed tech.

Users feel frustrated with the edtech tools they’re using

4 user interviews were conducted  with users recruited through Respondant. After analyzing the data recovered, these insights were found:

1

Tools are hard to learn

Users feel discouraged by the complexity of edtech platforms.

Usability

2

Data reports are key

Users consider data reports a major benefit that helps them take better decisitions.

Data-driven

3

Student accountability is lacking

Users put high value on transparency and want to know what their students are actually doing during class.

Accountability

4

Too many tools

Users feel frustrated when they have to learn and switch tools constantly.

Unification

Investing in usability as the main strategy

After analyzing the strenghts, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the industry through SWOT & TOWS matrices, we were able to get strategies to guide and give value to the solutions.

1

Focus on efficiency

Introduce features that diminish time taken to complete tasks.

Efficiency

2

Push for innovation

Implement new technologies that give added value to the users.

Innovation

3

Centralize features

Ideate solutions that help reduce the quantity of tools educators use.

Unification

Edtech for Jr. High Schools is a niche with little, suboptimal competition

After conducting a small UX bencharking analysis and taking into account the findings from the research, the following market insights were discovered:

No existing platform caters to the needs of our users

There aren’t many competitors and most of them are outdated by current industry standards. An opportunity for disruptive innovation.

No competitor is focusing on usability

Being easy to use is one of the most important factors that users value when choosing a tool. Usability is a great competitive advantage.

Student performance monitoring is an innovative and desired feature

Not only does this cater to the needs of School Administrators, but it’s also something that no other platform is doing.

Edureka: A unified solution for administrators and schools

Edureka is a web platform design concept that aims to solve the needs expressed by our target user base. It acts as a hub for all the information regarding the school. A one-stop shop for administrators to monitor classes and student performance based on data.

Unification

Innovation

Real-time student performance monitoring

As an answer to being highly requested by the users, this feature was introduced.

1

Hold in-platform sessions with monitored activities.

2

See your student’s platform screens in real time.

3

Get notifications when a student has other tabs opened or has become inactive.

Accountability

Innovation

A whole new dimension to data reports

Desgined to keep building upon the recognized usefulness of data reports by the users.

1

Comparative reports that allow to easily contrast information and find trends.

2

Data reports on student performance for every session hold on the platform.

3

Explore student data directly by clicking on their name.

Data-driven

Efficiency

Usability-first approach to the interface

To create a user-friendly learning curve and become an easy entry point to edtech.

1

Clean and self explanatory interface.

2

Daily tips and tricks to improve productivity, progressively disclousing features.

3

Step-by-step tutorials with a guided example for complex features.

Usability

Efficiency

That’s super great, can I see more?

Yes, you can! Explore the full designs as well as the design system in the Figma file.

View project file

What did I learn?