End-to-end App Case Study | Empurr for Teachers

Role 🙋🏻‍♀️

UX/UI Designer

Tools 🛠

Figma

Project Type 🗓

Non-client, End-to-end mobile app

4 weeks

Project Timeline ⏳

Empowering teachers beyond the classroom

An app for highschool teachers to manage and share learning resources with their students outside of the classroom environment. It also serves as a platform for teachers to be more exposed to EdTech resources, and be able to learn about their students’ learning needs more effectively.

Despite in recent years the EdTech space has seen a rise in EdTech tools such as Google Classroom, Kahoot, however, teachers still aren't getting all their needs met

A preview of the final product

Keeping track of student engagement is very important to teachers

Especially when it comes to engaging with learning resources outside of class Therefore, a report feature that tracks students’ learning activities offer valuable insights to teachers

Effective communication with students

helps teachers understand their learning needs better

The Student Voices page serves as a space for students to share topics and ideas they’re interested in learning outside of class

Easy access to EdTech resources

It’s stressful and time consuming for teachers to spend time exploring EdTech tools outside of class

The EdTech Resources feature serves as a space for teachers to gain access to all kinds of education resources such as articles, apps, forums etc.

Centralised workflow for teachers

With different tools out there serving different needs, teachers find themselves using multiple tools at the same time

In this app, teachers are able to manage reports, communication, resources all within one app

I kicked off my prelim research

by asking 4 of my teacher friends a few questions over whatsapp about their teaching experiences and exposure with EdTech tools

From there, I discovered teachers aren’t able to fully utilise EdTech tools because there’s just too many out there and they’re constantly juggling multiple responsibilities

In addition, they also shared the desire to be able to have more effective communication with their students with the help of EdTech tools

Lack of teacher focused platforms

To address the lack of teacher-focused tools, I decided to design an app focusing on a teacher's perspective

1. Student Engagement

100% participants care a lot about student engagements. However, it is challenging for them to know how and if their students are even engaging with learning resources outside of class

It would be quite time consuming and stressful for teachers to keep following up with their students

Therefore the app has a report feature that tracks how students engage with learning resources outside of class, and even provides insights on how teachers can help students improve on different skills

2. Easy access to EdTech tools

80% participants shared how they’re having a difficult time catching up with EdTech tools and trends

Teachers often have to spend lots of time exploring a tool, then teaching students how to use it before they can start utilising the tool itself

To address this pain, the app has a Resources Page where users can access different EdTech resources, organised by subject and resource type

Users have the option to ‘Star’ or ‘Bookmark’ these resources so that they can easily access them later on in the app

One of the participants mentioned she’s a representative of the EdTech Committee at school. She’s responsible for gathering a list of EdTech tools every now and then to share with other students

I therefore included the same element into the app in the School Community Page which serves as a space for teachers to share insights and resources with each other

3. Personalised & centralised workflow for teachers

Different teachers have different ways of organising teaching materials. However, often times they’re unable to do so tue to technical constraints

Even for platforms like Google Classroom. Participants shared how they’re not able to arrange materials, classes in a particular order

To address this, users are able to sort different types of resources within the app to their liking

Whether it is by how recently it was posted, alphabetical order, or by comments engagement for forum posts

Users can also ‘Star’ pages and resources. It will then show up on the Home Page for easy access anytime

For a centralised workflow, users are able to track student engagement, access and share resources, and communicate with students and teachers alike all within the app

4. Effective communication with students

100% participants emphasise the importance of having effective communication with their students

Especially when it comes to understanding their learning needs so that students will be more motivated to learn

The app has a ‘Student Voices’ page which is a space for students to post different things they want to learn, be it learning english through gaming, interesting audio books or youtube channels for learning

Students can react to these topics by voting if they share the same learning need as well

Teachers therefore have access to these topics and ideas and will be able to share relevant resources with their class within the app

Participants have indicated the need for more visual and personalised interface to make the experience more enjoyable and engaging

Therefore, the focus here with the sketches was on big, visual and clear buttons, and also areas where users can customise their own view of content

Starting from the low-fidelity wireframes is where I start considering how the layout would cater to different views, and aligning card button and icon designs across screens

I also made sure that there’s sufficient clarity and hierarchy of information, while also giving users a familiar interface by referencing Google Classroom and other platforms for the card button designs

The main challenge with high-fidelity prototypes was how to balance the different colors such that they are cohesive and won’t overwhelm users

I spent a lot of time deciding on the use of icons and illustrations to create a more visual and high school friendly interface

View Prototype

Now it’s ready to put the best to the test

I gave myself a challenge by being intentional about not recruiting teachers who took part in my user interview. I believe having new perspectives would be valuable and avoid any bias towards certain features

In the end, I recruited 6 participants for usability test. 3 of them were not my user interview participants

From the 6 usability tests, referencing the tasks flows I gave the participants 3 scenarios and discovered

Teachers expect to view and access content by class

Teachers prefer to categorise and view content by class rather than by topics

“I would prefer to view all the different information by class, especially if I click onto a class and be able to find all the relevant topics, reports kind of like a dashboard.”

“Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished enthusiasm is the big secret to success.”

Savas Dimopoulos

What I learnt

A hard look at my initial design

Never be sure about things until I’ve learnt from a teacher’s perspective

Never start with a solution but to start with identifying the problem first.

What I Enjoyed

It’s not the user’s fault

A lot of teachers believe EdTech tools are difficult to use because they’re not tech-savy, I reminded them it’s about how the tool’s been design and not about how tech-savy they are

Constructive feedbacks from DesignLab facilitators, classmates and my mentor

What I’d Do Differently

The adventure doesn’t end here

If I have more time, given I made quite a few changes after the usability test, it would be valuable to run another round of usability test

I would have wanted to further diversify my user interview and usability test participants in terms of the country they teach and not having the same participant participate in both sessions. This would help provide me with a more diversified perspective