Student's best friend
In this optional 2 week-long project at Changemaker Educations, our school became the client. In response to the coronavirus and the sudden switch to a work from home climate, a digital transformation is taking place.
We contributed by prototyping a new mobile-optimized, web experience, collecting all services used in one place.
" How can a digital transformation help us to grow internationally? "
" How can a digital transformation help us to acquire and serve customers in a B2B market? "
" How can a digital transformation help us to serve our vocational education students more efficiently? "
A quite unconventional project
For the first time since starting my education at Changemaker, we were able to break the pattern of online-only studies.
With this project being part of an optional course, three of us got together to tackle it under 2 weeks of our summer vacation.
Design process
I facilitated the workshops in our design sprint. In the prototyping and polishing phases, I acted as a general designer with a focus on the messages and courses sections.
Wants and needs
A big motivation for us to address the problems this project presented us with, was being able to, as students relate to the issues on a personal level.
Changemaker Educations isn't a company based on distance learning, quite the opposite actually. The current setup of different tools and software was jumbled together in a hasty response to the pandemic, and it's noticeable.
Currently, there are several calendars needed to be checked daily, announcements can come via email or the learning platform Canvas, etc.
A change is needed.
A vertical slice of the tools we use daily
Design sprint
We decided that we wanted to try and collect as many of the tools we and our teachers use daily in one place as possible. Our hypothesis was that this would eliminate many of the questions that arise and lighten the cognitive load by having the things you need to keep track of together.
We also hypothesized that this would make it easier to study from abroad, not having to go back and forth as often with support or teachers in search of information. This might even facilitate the organization to more easily, grow internationally.
We created the first iteration of our prototype and, as usual in a sprint, tested it with 5 users. We picked 5 students familiar with the issues at hand.
A customer journey we made focusing on applying for internships
Polishing the prototype
During the last week, we polished our Figma prototype, as well as implemented changes based on our test results.
After finishing the sprint, we gathered all insights we had gotten from our user tests the week before. We had received a lot of valuable feedback on features and layout that we were able to implement in our 2nd iteration prototype.
Being pleased with the result, we started on a complete write-up of all the recommendations we had for the school, based on our findings.
The components making up our clickable Figma prototype
The result
For this iteration, we prototyped the student view of the site, members of staff and companies would in a live version have their own customized views.
Profile and tools
By scrolling down on the profiles landing page, you can access all other tools featured on the site, of course, you always have access to everything you might need, using the hamburger menu in the top right.
On the landing page, you get a quick update from your calendar on what's next up today. Above this, you have a small statistics area, here you get quick access to the active course, total education completion, and when your internship period starts.
Since the key pillar of our design was collecting everything you need in one place, services that wouldn't for one reason or another fit natively within the site can still quickly be launched from Tools.
Message and announcements
In the messages section you can see, well messages... and announcements! The design philosophy here is once again to gather everything, in one neat package.
The section is split into two for a reason though, with messages you can chat with other students, teachers, or companies potentially providing an internship. In the announcements section, on the other hand, the school (or companies) can communicate more sweeping news, i.e. updates from IT, or changes in locales.
In a conversation, you can share files. By clicking the paperclip in the green bar, you get easy access to all files shared between you and the recipient/sender.
Courses
Probably the site's main feature, the courses section gives you an overview of the active course, upcoming courses, and the ones you've completed.
Like on the landing page, viewing a specific course gives you insight into its scope, relevant tools & links, and what's up next. From here you can also contact the course supervisor directly if you have something on your heart.
In the completed courses view, your grade is shown, alongside your gained skills from the course that can be endorsed by people.
Not pictured here, but there's an entire section for gained skills on the site - this can help internship providers pick among students if they're looking for a certain skill to be mastered.
Internships
This feature might be a bit of a wet dream for some students (which I'll admit it is for me).
In this section, companies partnered, or otherwise affiliated with the school can post ads when they're looking for interns - which they totally should do more often! :)
As a student, you'll get an overview of how many slots are available at a company and are able to apply to it directly from the site.
You also get insight into what the company is looking for, and can message them directly if you have any questions.
Final thoughts
Key takeaways
As I've mentioned in other case studies, you really can't test enough. With more time we would probably have iterated on our design through a follow-up sprint and more usability tests. We would also have liked to explore how a desktop version would have looked.
The design sprint is essentially just a collection of workshop exercises, but the model really isn't made with 2 people in mind (which we were most of the time due to scheduling issues).
The workshops went fast forward and we had a real easy time coming to decisions - maybe too fast. A few more perspectives would have been valuable.
• Collecting "All" services in one place are harder than I initially thought it be
• Building for a mobile web browser and its limited space is difficult
• Communicating with the customer is key, which we weren't able to do during the summer break
• Jumping straight into a sprint works, but doing some research into the subject beforehand is preferred
Experience our solution
The following prototype was made for educational purposes, pages primarily in English, some Swedish occur, and only partially interactable.
July 2021
