Redesign a service -
Ace Tutors Case Study
Redesign a service - Ace Tutors Case Study
Overview:
This a Group project from General assembly class. I was tasked to redesign a service. My team and I decided to go into Private tutoring services as tuition plays a big part in Singapore. We chose AceTutors as it is an online platform that offers matching services between tutors and tutees according to specified criteria.
Timeline:
2.5 weeks
Team:
Dylan Lim Dai Yu
Sean Tan
Sherry Tan
Vera Neo
My role:
Researcher, Prototyping,
Usability testing,
Design iterations
Tools:
Figma, Mural, Trello, optimal workshop
Research:
Before we deep dive into the problem, we wanted to know more about the private tutoring sector and more about Acetutors.
We did secondary research about the industry and found out that Singapore has a booming Tutoring industry with S$1.4 billion spent on tuition by households in 2018. We did interviews with 8 Tutors and 8 tutees to find out their experience and habits when engaging private tutors. By compiling the raw data into Affinity mapping we concluded these key things that we want to focus on.
Tutee :
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want to be able to see improvements in grade
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want my tuition to be convenient
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trust my friends/family's referrals for a good tutor
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I need to be able to trust the tutor/company
Tutor :
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I wan my tutee to do well academically and have a good attitude
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I prefer the tuition to be nearby
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I rely on word of mouth recommendations
Competitor analysis and Feature Prioritization:
With the key insights from the user interview and the competitor analysis in mind, we did tree testing to group and further validate our categories to match our competitors. Due to the vast difference between our current website and our competitors we needed to do feature prioritization to focus our efforts to have to clean and effective way to address the user’s needs, at the same time not to compromise the business needs. This was done using feature prioritization (MoSCow).
We did a customer journey map and service blueprint to understand how the process work and realize the current website is confusing with multiple ways to engage the service and hard to navigate.
We also saw the potential to optimize on the back-end through data management and technology to reduce the steps needed when matching the tutee to tutors.
Finding the Problems:
Before we can solve anything we have to look at the issue on hand. As I discovered that finding a tutor and tutee is a long and painful process in the research phase we further break down into core problems by creating 2 personas the insights from the interview and explore How Might We(s) help them.
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HMW assure students’ learning and improvement?
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HMW get the parents or student to trust the agency more?
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HMW match tutors and tutees location better?
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HMW minimise cancellation and dropouts?
Solutions:
Keeping these in mind, we came up with 6 solutions to help address the problems stated.
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Use of more specific map functions and postal code filters to match tutors and tutees by location better.
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Simplified tutor account creation system with verification
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Automated referrals system
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Detailed profile pages with bio information and teaching video sample to better match tutee’s needs.
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Lesson Scheduler to prevent miscommunication between tutor and tutee
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Integrated seamless payment system to match competitors based MuSCoW.
Now that we know what we want to achieve we started designing.
Userflow and Sitemap:
We came up with the existing user flow for both the tutee and tutor to understand the user flow within the existing website. Our findings are that there is a cognitive overload on the users when they use the website. We decided to streamline the flow and came up with a redesigned user flow.
We decided to rebrand and redesign the website as the website causes confusion to the users when they are on the website due to the overloading of information and multiple way to engage a service with a different formats.
Sketches and Wireframe:
The key features and information are clear after the phases above, we went on to sketch individually and come about to discuss what is good in each design. we pick the best features among all the designs and combined it into the final sketch and wireframe to work on the prototype
To keep the team in line and maintain consistency. We came up with brand guidelines and design systems. You can refer to it here.
Prototyping:
We the previous phases and wire-frame in mind. we created a mid-fidelity prototype. Each feature to address the problem we discovered earlier.
Usability testing:
After screening recruiting, we grouped the testers into 2 groups(tutee and tutor) and did 2 rounds of remote testing with a total of 16 testers(8 testers[4 tutees and 4 tutors] per round.). For round 1 we tested the original website vs our prototype, in order to tackle the bias-ness of the first product we alternated the sequence of the website presented to testers(ie AB Testing). We evaluate by overall task success rate and average sub-task success rate, taking both the qualitative data and observations.
Given 2 task to complete for tutors and tutees:
Tutor:
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Register as a new tutor
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Get assignments
Tutee:
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Find a tutor
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Refer a friend to Acetutor
The key findings and iterations after 2 round of testing from the original website to ut2:
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SEQ -overall improvement for both tutee and tutor
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The overall task for both tutee and tutor had a 25% improvement success
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Focused on sub task that are at 50% and below to iterate
To summarize there was a few confusion with the initial prototype design which led the users to fail the overall task, with the qualitative data we are able to do adjustments and see an improvement in the second UT.
What's Next for AceTutors?
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IA - Do card sorting for tutees/students for more clarity surrounding behavior between “Help Me Match a Tutor” (serviced) and “Find a Tutor” (self-service)
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Conduct usability testing for Prototype Version 3 and target to improve the pass rate for Task 1 for tutees to search and schedule a lesson with a tutor and Task 1 for tutors to register.
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Develop other areas on the web eg. Profiles, About Us, Testimonials, and Contact pages, we would like to test and compare the trustworthiness through SUS usability scoring & key user insights
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To develop a responsive mobile website and layout breakpoints to accommodate mobile / tablet devices.
Thank you for reading!