Silver Oak University
What was the biggest challenge for schools when quarantine started?
It was the first time so many schools were going online. Because of that, communication with parents was a mess. There were WhatsApp groups but teachers could only answer so many questions.
Why were parents so worried?
Since this was the first time anything like this had happened, and schools were not able to share information properly, parents felt lost and unsure about what to do.
Did school websites help?
Not really. Even though schools had websites, they weren’t well-maintained and lacked human touch.
What was the solution to this problem?
The idea of building an app clicked in my mind as a way to make communication smoother and more reliable.
Did the idea for the app change over time?
Yes! At first, it was just meant to fix the communication gap, but over time, it became clear that it had more potential than I thought. It would also let schools show care for their students.
What is my role?
I lead the whole project from researching to prototyping to finalising design decisions.
Process
The process of empathizing and identification
The phase where I create ideas, prototypes and sort them together to form something.
The process where I chose the aesthetics of the project.
*The process is not linear in nature.
Testing phase involves testing of ideas and prototypes to draw some conclusion from the results from it.
Discover
In this stage, I identify the parties involved, their roles, their problems, and their expectations by interviewing 6 people which would allow me to get to the core problem thus defining the shape of the solution.
Development
Now that it was finalized that it would be an app that would help us solve the problem, I started working on the structure and content that would of this app. During the whole process I organized and categorized ideas, made user flows, sketches and lo-fi prototypes. The big hurdle: Abundance of scattered data and difficulty in managing data.
Method used: Braindumping
Organisation
Big questions for me!
How should I start? Where should I start?
What do I need in this app?
How do I organize this app?
What will the base of the app will be?
I wrote down all the ideas on a notebook. I made tables and lists to help me organise data. I made main groups and sub-groups to put data of the same nature together. Then I would pick one group at a time to refine and come up with the ideas. This method helped me in not going off-topic. Overall this brought a lot of clarity by giving a shape to scattered data, further helping in generating more ideas.
Method used: Content Mapping
When the data was organised and set in it's place, it was time to connect them and put them together so I made userflows for each category or groups/sub-groups to help me in refine the process.
User-Flows
Prototypes
After the paper-work and research was done(for now), it was time to build prototype. Learning from my previous mistake, I only made hand-drawn prototypes using pencil on a paper, to save time, for each group and sub-group.
Design
Colors have the ability to make people feel different emotions. Through the help of color psychology, I could pinpoint the kind of emotion I wanted users to feel.
How I choose colors?
All the colours used have some psychological effect to the task they represent.
What I wanted users to feel?
Since this is a school app, most of it's users are students and parents, I wanted them to feel that this app is: Reliable and Trustworthy
Typeface Choice
For headings: Lora
For Content: Open Sans
Testing
This the most interesting phase because in this phase our ideas are tested. Weaknesses and strengths are discovered. Not only that testing, in general, is fun to me.
Methods used: User Interviews and A/B Testing
Some of the elements are displayed below.
Homescreen: Calendar
Before
After
Problem with the design:
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Bad at communicating long-term data.
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Not an effective way for data tracking.
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Require too much back-tracking if one wishes to see something.
Fees: Payments
Problem with the design:
Lack of information or rather missing important information regarding fee structure and what the user is paying for.
Integrating of key components: Payment system
Problem with the design:
Payment history was hindering the payment process because of the quarter system
Uneasy to use
Overhaul of a change
The whole navigation was created to be simple and easy to use but it was not. During the interview/observation phase, users were not comfortable with the system. Some of the common phrases that users said were as follows:
But how will I know.....?
Where do you find...…?
Something is missing?
It's confusing.
Observing the problem:
I was oversimplifying the process by cutting down content or grouping the functions together. I went back to the discover and development phase .
Solution (from the unexpected source):
The biggest mistake that I made when interviewing users(usually parents) was that I did not interview the children as much as I did the parents. After interviewing them, Their perspective was unique, the way they saw things, did things was unique and SIMPLE and the biggest observation was how they expected the design to function. This defined the word simplify for me and for better reason.
I separated and ungrouped various functions and gave them their own slot in the menu bar.
Another best thing I did to improve the product was to involve the users in this process. I asked them to come up with ideas for this system. This changed everything!! The number of ideas we were able to generate were astoundingly big. And according to the tests the users loved the new design.
On the right is the new design of navigation system with actual simplified menu.
Before
Before
Solution:
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Calendar-Based data tracking system.
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More data coverage
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Easy maintenance
Solution:
Give them a summary table which would break down fee structure give users detailed information.
Solution:
Merge the two processes into one and implement a unified proven system.
Impact:
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Efficient and effective way to present data
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Reduced user efforts for the search of information
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Visually easy on the eye.
Impact:
Users can now clearly see what they are paying for. It's more transparent now
After
After
Impact:
Users can now independently pay or view the summary of their payments between different quarters on the same page.
Inspiration:
Google's calendar system.
Inspiration:
From amazon's payment summary.
Before
After
Full Design
Failures and Lessons
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I should document my research more, for the calculation of statistical data.
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Less is not more. It all depends on context.
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Don't have a pre-laid plan for the project as each scenario will be different.
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Projects should be designed in a way to make them future sustainable.
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Observe and you might find the best solutions to problems.