Tutor Star

A tutor matching app designed to help parents easily search and connect with qualified high school students to guide their young children to success in the classroom.

Overview

Problem

A Bay Area working parent to a five year old who struggles with math but she is a working parent that is not always able to help her child. She wants to find a high school tutor to help her child since they are much closer in age and can understand the schooling system better since they have more recently gone through their elementary school years. But she does not really know how to go about finding a tutor

Solution

I designed an app for parents of young children to search and find high school tutors to help their child improve in school and book sessions with them. Tutors will also be able to use the app to find prospective clients.

My Role

UX Research, UX/UI Design

Project Length

3 weeks

Tools

Figma

Research

Competitive Analysis

I began by researching existing education apps since I knew there are a lot of them for various things, and I wanted to know how those apps achieved their goal. Some apps are simple to learn subjects, some have instructional videos, and some market a tutoring service. Three commonly used ones are these and I specifically chose Kadama and Wyzant because they utilize their platform similar to what I want to do.

Wyzant

Pros

Easy account creation with social media integration
Step by step process to set up search
Clear and concise instructions for new users
Option to save progress and complete later
Intuitive search filters for subjects, location, and availability
Calendar/scheduling Integration
Learning progress tracking

Cons

Mostly a library of online lessons/resources taught by tutors — have to request for specific help for a test/homework

Pros

User-friendly registration process
Intuitive search and match features
Efficient scheduling and communication tools
Diverse pool of qualified tutors
Transparent tutor profiles with credentials and ratings
Advanced search filters for personalized matches
Background checks for tutors
User reviews and ratings for tutor credibility

Cons

Adult tutors and less parent interaction: Possible safety concerns

Kadama

Insights

All these apps in particular have a very diverse age range and not that many security features to sign up
most of these involve either tutors or students or parents or all of them to place an ad for themselves and then their counterparts will respond to that posting

Client Interviews

My research on competing apps and services helped me narrow down some questions for my client, through which we were able to make some key decisions in the direction of the design and purpose of the app. I was able to narrow down a scope of a simple task they wanted to accomplish, as well as ideas about features that could be added, both necessary and optional.

Insights:

Main pain point: there is no platform to find specifically high school tutors
Many different apps involve more student autonomy and that isn't feasible for younger students in elementary school
Many apps are strictly educational content within app: this app needs focus on live teaching
It should be mostly an app to find and schedule live tutoring sessions with a tutor
The Parent and the Tutor would be the main users of this app, even though the student's needs also need to be taken into consideration when designing
Safety considerations need to be there since minors (the tutors) will be using the app
They want a way for different tutors to distinguish themselves so parents can decide amongst the options

"the only way to find a high school tutor right now is by word of mouth"

Creating Personas

From my client interview and research, I then created two personas I felt best fit the people using the app the most, a parent of a child needing tutoring and the tutor. Since the client and I had earlier decided that the students would be too young to make decisions on tutors and have the responsibility of scheduling their time and sessions, I decided to remove students from the focus of the app itself.

User Stories

In researching the ideal user and creating personas, I narrowed it down to these key user stories to target when solving the clients problem:

As a parent of a student, I need to be able to create a profile for my student to properly address their learning needs.

As a parent of a student, I need to be able to search and select a tutor for my student.

As a parent I would need to view my child’s tutoring sessions and schedule.

As a parent I need to be able to see a tutor’s profile in order to choose the right fit for my student.

Site Map

Taking user needs into consideration, I began my design thinking process by building a site map of what features and pages the app could and would have, in order to narrow down the actual basic features needed to accomplish the client's goal and needs.

User Flow

As I narrowed down the key features and tasks that the client wanted to accomplish with the app, I decided that it would be best to stick to a simple flow of a user being able to sign up, create a profile, search for a user and send them a session request. I think based on this user flows it would be useful to design from the perspective of both a new parent user and one that has created an account already.

Sketches

Wireframes

My first low fidelity wireframe iterations began with a very basic onboarding process, where a user would sign up and create their profile. Most notably, I decided that an interesting and unique feature to add would be a short intro video for users to add to their profile so that they could quickly introduce their needs more clearly. Upon finishing these, I do feel like I could have kept my low fidelity screens a bit more simple so they are easier to change in formatting without worrying about the content. I felt that I was stuck with this frame structure more as I moved into the high fidelity frames and visual design.

Branding/Visual Design

As I continued iterating on my low fidelity wireframes and began moving into a high fidelity design, I began to think about the visual design and how an app promoting education would be themed and styled. I felt that it was easier to iterate with at least a basic color scheme and font in place, so I decided to go with this purple and red color theme for this design and began experimenting and implementing it at this stage. Additionally, I named the app tutor star for tutors and their star pupils and subsequently the logo was made to be a graduation cap within a star.

High Fidelity Prototype

Displayed here are the results of said iteration into the final high fidelity prototype that was used for user testing. I also additionally added screens for the scheduling and profile page that is able to be accessed through the navigation bar that I had previously dismissed as part of the design. I went back and adjusted my user stories and user flow accordingly to reflect these new decisions. I felt that they were slightly important side features that informed the user of important details pertaining to the main task.

Usability Testing

Tasks Given

Signing up and creating a profile
Searching for a tutor
Filtering the search results
Choosing a tutor profile from the results to view
Sending a specific tutor a session request
Using the schedule and profile tab

Test Results and Issues

Main Issues

A lot of different options on the main page did distract and made users try to press them
Users wanted to know what came next and how the contact would happen
Scheduling and profile page were confusing
missing a back button
search fields need more contrast with purple backgrounds during on boarding
the red should be used a little more sparingly so it does not feel like an alarm or error

Positive feedback:

Color scheme was unique and appealing
Tasks were easily accomplished logically and naturally

Final Product

Incorporating feedback from the testing, I continued to improve my app design in several additional iterations, integrating valuable suggestions and maintaining consideration for others in preparation for future refinements. Some valuable changes included:

A back button ensured that users could backtrack from any stage in the user flow, including the onboarding process
a simplified schedule and profile pages to be less confusing and also not the main focus
heightened contrast so the legibility of all the text was better, especially in search/text fields
added the version of the design for which an existing user would login and see a slightly different homepage and schedule

See Prototype

Final Thoughts

This was an exciting project for me as someone who has experienced the education system in the bay area and also tutored as my part time job in high school--I really would have benefitted from an app like this while in school. In hindsight, since I had a lot of different ideas to accomplish both the goals of this client and add more features, a longer timeline would have been really beneficial. There are a lot of features I thought were necessary but not significant for the sake of the initial goals of the client.

Lessons Learned

taught me many valuable principles for designing in an agile environment and iterating quickly
Quick iteration meant I was not logging quick idea changes and examples of them
My low fidelity models need to be simpler so i can ideate better and start things over quicker without worrying about lost work
While it is easier to design for a singular client and do research, that information may not be representative of what is good and useful for a vast amount of people using the app
Balancing what the client wanted and needed with design thinking could be difficult at times
Difficulty knowing where I should wrap it up and stop for the sake of the client's goals and the design sprint

Future Iteration Ideas:

In-app messenger feature is the next necessary component
Tutor dashboard and user flow
Expanding on other features from the Information Architecture (i.e. editing a profile, a scheduling page to confirm a session, payment features)
Add back the video profile feature once security measures are in place
Develop a security feature during sign up to make sure users are reputable people for the safety of the high school tutors