Capstone Project Geniebook Run by General Assembly (2024)
What do users need from an online education platform for revision? This UX case study explores how it can address student challenges during review
Project Overview
What are Geniebook’s business goals?
Geniebook is a powerful suite of online learning products comprising AI-personalised worksheets, live online classes, and teacher chats, complemented by physical tuition classes to help students learn smarter and do better.
Our objective is to reduce the effort required and enhance the usability for secondary students in answering open-ended maths questions by designing a user-friendly interface tailored to their needs.
MY ROLE
An UI/UX designer where my responsibilities involves working closely with stakesholder and communicating design recommendations, prioritising outcomes, leading the end-to-end design process, and managing expectations across dev teams.
DURATION
8 Weeks
DESIGN TOOLS
Figma, slack, zoom (remote)
User Research
Secondary school students as our main focus for this project.
To understand the challenges faced by the user, we conducted user interviews and contextual inquiries to understand users' behavior, goals, and motivations when it comes to revising their math. Below are some of the objectives we aim to uncover during the research phase.
01
Gathering feedbacks on the existing platform.
Understanding why user prefer a certain mode of revision and tools they often use.
02
Evaluating existing input flows and their usability.
Paying attention to user flow can help identify potential challenges faced by users
03
Measure the importance of each feature.
What are the common features that students typically use right away, and what is their impact?
04
Identify the missing features that the students might need.
A lack of features led to frustration for students when revising math.
Finding & Analysis
Students are not invested enough to stay committed in the platform.
We delve into how students typically practice mathematics, explore the methods they find helpful, and examine their experiences with online platforms (Geniebook) using quantitative methods such as user interviews and contextual inquiries.
From the insights, we are able to identify the main issues we need to solve in order to reduce the effort required and enhance the usability for secondary students in answering open-ended math questions.
01
How users describe their learning style & the difference between online & offline learning
02
Would users be keen on using Geniebook to practice math?
03
Users are spending more time looking for tools than attempting math problems.
Defining Persona
Synthesizing the patterns from the users response
To define the goals of the persona we created, we consolidated the key insights from our user research. These insights shaped our understanding of the user’s requirements and guided us in setting clear objectives to enhance their online learning experience.
Chloe
15, High Achiever, Sec 3
To enhance online math learning and revision, the goal is to provide digital tools that mimic physical math practice, an efficient way to input math symbols, and the ability to switch between different formats seamlessly within a single platform
Problem Discovery
Framing problem statements for end-users and their journeys.
Through the strategic use of affinity mapping, we leveraged gathered insights to draw conclusive findings and refine problem statements, enabling us to effectively address identified issues within the UX case study.
To address these challenges and generate potential solutions, we adopted HMW technique to encourage brainstorming and creative problem-solving. By reframing user insights and pain points as HMW statements, we could better ideate and explore a wide range of possible solutions
PRIMARY PROBLEM
Chloe needs a more efficient way to practice math online to maximize her revision time
HMW
Reduce the number of steps to upload a physical working?
01
HMW
Help the student to mass upload their workings and sort out accordingly to the questions?
02
HMW
Improve the insertion of symbols in the typing tool?
03
HMW
Allow the students to easily type their full working out with the proper presentation (symbols and functions)?
04
Analysing Market & Competitions
Identifying Opportunities that offer identical features.
After analyzing the popular players in the online learning space, we noticed a common set of features across platforms designed for students. We hypothesized that these features are crucial for self-learning at any time. This observation presents an opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves by adopting a unique approach.
Ideation & Design
Approaching a solution through sketching and converging ideas.
We began addressing the problem by creating rough sketches or initial designs. This helped us visualize different possibilities. Afterward, we refined and combined these ideas to arrive at the most effective solution.
The early stage of user testing and a client meeting on the wireframes, feedback highlighted two crucial aspects: streamlining content and establishing a storytelling theme. The focus is on achieving simplicity with minimal wording, prioritising infographics for a strong thematic presence, and creating an inviting art gallery atmosphere to stimulate user exploration.
Feature Prioritisation
The tight timeline forced us to re-prioritize our features using the MoSCoW method.
To manage our project more effectively within a shorter timeframe and considering technical feasibility, we decided to adopt the MoSCoW method to help us narrow down the potential MVP.
We focused on low-effort, high-impact features. This process was facilitated through a voting system and frequent reference to our persona's pain points to ensure alignment with user needs.
* Legend for above diagram: Green = Must Have | Blue = Should Have | Orange = Could Have | Red = Won't Have
The Solutions
The recommended solutions to ease the user's challengers
Our aimed was to create a versatile and flexible tool for students, which would increase the number of questions and worksheets they complete, encouraging them to return to Geniebook for their studies.
Solution Objective 01
Reduce the number of steps required to upload image to the canvas.
Direct camera tool that allow user to snap a photo directly to the canvas.
To crop out areas that is not required of the photo and upload to the canvas.
Solution Objective 02
Tools that could aid the user in answering their question.
“Math & Graph function Tool” that allow user to input any symbols to their working.
"Highlighter Tool” to highlight key details while practicing.
“Question Locator” Button assist the student flow of work that can zoom back to the question.
Solution Objective 03
Replicate real-life worksheet experience by introducing a multi-question view mode
"Question View Toggle" option to toggle between question viewing modes. Either on a single questions view or multi questions view.
“Drag and Drop Box” reduce the friction of uploading images/pdf by including drag and drop function from their computer folder.
“Multi Photo Cropping Window” for the students to crop the image before submitting.
Iterations From Usability Test Insights
2 rounds of usability testing to refine the hierarchy and assess feasibility.
Our team conducted usability tests both in person and via Zoom. Participants were asked to complete various scenarios, allowing us to observe their movement patterns and their ability to achieve goals. These observations, coupled with multiple rounds of feedback, enabled us to make key information more accessible and while incorporating users' suggestions and implemented new solutions.
1. Removing top question selector
Users find it confusing to locate the math function tool and troublesome to switch between the text and math function tools.
Combine the text and math function tools. Both will appear at the bottom with the textbox to reduce friction.
2. Implementing tooltips to enhance clarity
It was not intuitive for users to use the “Q:” feature to locate the question.
Hence, a tool tip was added on the feature upon hovering. Slider bar was also install as an option to allow user to return to it’s default setting.
3. Increase the visual hierarchy.
Users were unable to identify the 'View All Questions' button and were led to click on the question selector instead.
Moved the 'View All Questions' button to the right, replacing the question selector, which was moved to the bottom to enhance visibility.
The Final MVP Product
The Overview of the enhanced platform
Uploading Of Answer
Accessing Tools
Toggle Viewing Mode
Defining Impact
Measuring user experience success of the platform
We then define the key performances to measure the success and impact of the product at this stage. In the future, further testing should be conducted to collect more quantitative and qualitative metrics. Post-launch metrics could also be analyzed to measure business outcomes.
User Satisfaction
How pleasing was the product to use measured through qualitative interviews
Task Completion Rate
How efficient it is for users to complete tasks measured through usability testing
Retention Rate
How often user uses feature through data collected over time, post launch
Retrospectives
Diving deep enough to truly understand user's needs
We want to create a versatile and flexible tool for students to use. This will help increase the number of questions and worksheets that they will do which in turn will encourage them to return to Geniebook for their studies.
During prototype testing, we learned that users needed certain math functions to replicate actual worksheets or exams. This led us to delve deeper to understand which functions would suit the current level.
It was both challenging and fun, as we had left our tertiary education some time ago, and our target audience consists mostly of secondary school students. We needed to learn more about the terms they use and determine which ones are applicable to the current system.