Teacher Mind

ROLE

UI/UX Designer

WHAT I DID

UX Research, Wireframing, Visual Design, Prototyping

DURATION

4 months

TOOLS

Adobe Illustrator, Adobe XD, Sketch, Figma

DELIVERABLES

User flows, Wireframes, Usability Testing, MVP Prototype

BRIEF

In diverse communities where people come from different backgrounds and cultures, it's hard to remember all names at first sight. Like many other teachers and professors, Victor couldn't remember his students' names. He faced this problem when he was giving his 5th lecture in a row. Then, he tried to find any solution with no success.

GOAL

Create a solution for teachers or professors like Victor so that they can remember their students' names easily.

APPROACH

1- Define user problems and needs.
2- Identify the teacher's behaviours and conclude brainstorming solutions.
3- Develop a solution prototype.

PROCESS

Before going through details, I want to start by highlighting how I structured the project.

RESEARCH

The initial step was to search for other existed solutions that might help me during the discovery phase.

INSIGHTS

I found some mobile applications that assist people who have the same struggle in remembering what they usually forget by which they can play games to refresh their minds. However, there was no solution offered in the market that can fulfil the whole process of remembering specific stuff such as peoples' names.

USER INTERVIEWS

I conducted interviews with 3 professors to get the right answers in order to determine their pain and frustration points. Also, I wanted to make sure that other professors face the same obstacles and seek help.

INSIGHTS

1- The most exciting finding was that teachers are afraid to pronounce students' names correctly. They tend to add some hints next to each name beforehand so they won't make any mistake when they say the names.

2- More than 5 students in the class make the teacher spend more of the lecture's time trying to memorise their names.

3- Schools or universities don't provide their professors or teachers with any proper solution that can help them learn to remember or how to say the students' names.

BRAINSTORMING

Based on the insights from the discovery phase, I wanted to do a quick brainstorming on the main pain points and any other remarkable point I might have missed earlier. This step might assist me to define my persona.

PERSONA

Based on those findings, I was able to identify my target audience as professors and teachers who are working at universities or/and schools professionals and care about their relationships with their students. I created a persona to help bring out a significant pain-point that the user might experience. 

Victor Smith

He is an art director who has an artistic personality and works as a designer teacher in different schools beside his main job.

His biggest challenge

He has a hard time to memorise the students' names and pronounce them correctly.

The major pain point

The biggest pain-point that I noticed was that he felt anxious and uncertain at every point of interaction with his students.

SOLUTION

After having these insights from the discovery & define phase, I came up with a solution to help Victor get rid of his fears when he interacts with his future students because of their names. 

Mobile application which allows Victor to memorise his students' names through two ways: 

1- Entering hints about each of his students next to their names such as hair colour, country, and other unique specs he notices. 

2- Playing a quiz game in which he answers questions according to his hints' inputs.

This solution would help him to focus more on the characteristics of his students, so it becomes easy to remember their names accordingly.

USER FLOWS

After completing the initial discovery period and coming up with a solution, I created a user flow based on the solution pitch. By having this user flow, I visualized the user's navigation from start to finish.

1- In the first flow, I imagined Victor would receive a notification from his application where his student group list is filled out, then he opens the list to add a description to each student.

2- In the second flow, he will only need to open the app to play the game.

USER TESTING

It's all about the users who will use the application, so it was a necessary step to do user testing after creating user flow and lo-fi wireframes to move forward to the hi-fi prototype. So, I created a matrix of two tasks that 5 users had to accomplish while observing their interactions.

VISUAL DESIGN

After the usability testing, I re-iterated & applied the changes on the lo-fi wireframes, then, I set some visual design rules & colors identity in order to start the hi-fi mockup.

1- Consistency & Standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. I made sure labelling was easy to understand & did not duplicate.

2- Aesthetic & minimalist design: The app design is minimal with no unnecessary actions or items. In terms of aesthetic, the design should align with the game vibe. Thus, I chose to use blue pastel as the primary colour.

3- Flexibility & efficiency of use: Actions in the app are self-explanatory & suitable for both experienced & inexperienced users. Keep it simple stupid (KISS).

COLORS IDENTITY

CHARACTERS DESIGN

HI-FI SCREENS

INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE

First flow: Here's a prototype that represents the whole journey from the moment of receiving a notification until the last moment, which is saving the description of the first student. Explore & interact with the prototype on Figma: CLICK HERE

Second flow: Anotther prototype that represents the user flow of playing the quiz game from the moment of opening the application until the last moment which is revealing the right answer. Explore & interact with the prototype on Figma: CLICK HERE

CONCLUSIONS & OUTCOMES

Overall, this was a great side project to work on my own. In 4 months, I followed the UX process & delivered an actual app with MVP screens. If there's only one thing that I would've done better, I would want to go through another iteration of usability testing on the hi-fi prototype. This usability testing would let me understand users & their responses to the hi-fi prototype.