Schoolify

Make the “right fit” your school

What I was tasked to do

Overview

For this project, I was asked to understand what parents go through when searching for schools for their children in order to come up with a tool that would help them during their school search process.

The duration of the project

The project lasted 3 weeks.

My role in this project

This project was a solo project so I was responsible for:

  • Conducting competitive research

  • Affinity diagramming

  • Conducting user surveys

  • Wireframing and prototyping mid- fi and high- fi prototypes

  • Conducting user testing

  • Applying microinteractions to prototypes

  • Presenting to stakeholders

Methods

The deliverables completed each sprint

In sprint 1, I conducted both user and competitive research in order to understand my competitors and potential users and then came up with a problem statement.
In sprint 2, I did some ideation to come up with potential solutions and then conducted user testing in order to test the solution I landed on.
In sprint 3, I did came up with the final product.

Research

Research I conducted on my competitors

I conducted competitive research on direct competitors such as, Niche, OurKids, GreatSchools.org, and U.S. New and World Report, in order to understand what features they had. After analyzing the competitors, I found an opportunity to add a feature that allows parents the opportunity to interact with other parents.

Affinity Diagramming of Interviews

I read through 6 interview of parents who had gone through the school search process and found schools for their children and created an affinity map in order to gather some qualitative insights.

Key Insights

  • Parents want schools that focus not just on education, but help their children to grow into well- rounded people (ex: provide a wide variety of extra-curriculars, instill good values, etc.).

  • Location plays a big role in selecting a school.

  • Parents relied on “gut feeling” and vibes of the school to make their decisions.

  • It was important to parents for schools/teachers to value their children as individuals and connect with their kids in order to make them comfortable and happy enough to thrive.

  • Parents experienced frustrations because of lack of consolidated resources.

Some quotes from the interviews that really emphasized how it was important to parents for schools/ teachers to value their children as individuals and connect with their kids were:

“It was important for me to believe in their whole approach to education. Their philosophy—Belong, Discover, Thrive—resonated with me, especially after such a tricky year where my son was so unhappy and the teacher clearly didn't like him. He couldn't learn because he felt unwelcome and unimportant. He needed to feel like he belonged somewhere before he could open up and learn.”

and

“I wanted to see my child flourish in an academic and social environment where kids were valued for who they are, and are not just seen as students. During the interview process, I saw how well my daughter connected with one of the teachers who, as it turns out, is the head of the curriculum. My daughter is interested in sewing and so the teacher said, “we could start a sewing club.” We had a tour, but my daughter took to it right away.”

Basically, from affinity diagramming I was able to understand that parents need to feel that the school their children are going to attend are going to encourage and give them resources to thrive as individuals and students. And for this to happen, the whole family must be involved in the school search process and connect with the school.

This was validated by the 2022 Niche Study result that stated:

“60% of K-12 parents said their children played a role in choosing the school they enrolled in. That number jumps to 76% for high school students.”

Conducting User Surveys

I also conducted user surveys in order to personally gather insights from parents who have recently gone through or are currently going through the school search process. From the survey, I gathered that:

  • Referrals from friend and family were the top preferred source of information.

  • Most parents visited the schools they planned on sending their children before making their final decision.

Coming up with the problem statement

Using insights from all the research I conducted, I crafted a problem statement in order to help specify what problem I was looking to solve.

Problem Statement

Parents looking to find the perfect school need a tool that allows the whole family to identify different types of schools based on location, personal priorities, and interaction with other parents in order to find schools that allow their children to thrive and grow into well- rounded people.

Design

Ideating solutions to the problem statement

Using the problem statement, I knew my product needed:

  • To give users access to information on different types of schooling options

  • Allow users to filter schools according to the priorities they had
    options for the whole family to be able to experience the schools

  • A feature that allowed parents to interact with other parents

Therefore, I did some rapid sketching in order to ideate different features that could solve for these needs.

Testing the potential solution

First, I built out mid- fi prototypes in order to conduct user testing.

Using these mid- fi prototypes. I conducted user testing.
The objectives of conducting user testing were:

  • Validate that users understand what this app is meant to be used for.

  • Understand pain points users have while using this app.

  • Understand whether users are able to complete the task with minimal difficulty.

  • Validate that this app serves its purpose of helping parents identify schools based on location, personal priorities, interaction with other parents, and overall vibes of the school.

This test was conducted over Zoom and in person. I gave my users a task to perform. While they performed the task, I asked them to explain the choices they made and their thought processes. I also asked them questions after the test in order to get a deeper understanding of their thoughts. The task that the users were asked to complete was:

Locate a school for your child that is in New York and save an event for parents from that school.

All the users that I tested with were able to successfully complete the task and stated no major pain points. However, one user pointed out that they would not be able to know that the app offered information about events had the task not stated to “save an event.” Therefore, I concluded that there should be a section for “Events” on the homepage of the app.

Final Product

Introducing Schoolify

Schoolify is an app that allows users to search for schools according to any constraints they have, such as, location, budget, grade level, etc. and any other factors they are looking for in schools such as, extracurricular activities. It also allows users to search for events the whole family can attend and to interact with other parents in discussion forums in order to be able to find the school that is the best fit for the whole family.
The brand statement for Schoolify is:

Every child, family, and school is different. Every family has different priorities and every child has a different learning style. We know that it can be stressful to find the perfect fit. Schoolify strives to make the school search process less stressful and turn the process into a  “casual adventure” that the whole family can go on to find the perfect school.

Some brand adjectives are:

  • Reliable

  • Informational

  • Casual

  • Adventurous

Using the brand adjectives and brand statement, I put together a style tile in order to represent the visual identity of Schoolify. The color palette includes toned down blues in order to convey “reliability” and “casual” while also including a brighter orange to convey “excitement” and “adventurous.” The logo for Schoolify is a graduation cap on top of a puzzle. It symbolizes “finding the right fit” for education.

The Schoolify App

Takeaways

A huge challenge of this project was the fact that I was responsible for all parts of the design process, from conducting research to designing and prototyping, over just 3 weeks. However, I was also able to learn to prioritize my time and focus on carrying out ideas and research findings that would have the most impact on users. I was also able to put into practice what I learned about design to create a product and experience firsthand the experience of working through time constraints to understand user needs and deliver a product accordingly.
The most important takeaway I got from this project was to make use of teams even if this was a solo project. One major constraint, other than time, I experienced throughout this project was the fact that I had limited personal connections to my target users. However, by forming a team with other people who were going through the same project, I was able to construct and carry out the user survey with relative more ease than if I was doing it alone. I also received significantly more responses.