FIND A TUTOR

Responsive website and a dedicated mobile app that enables tutors to list their services and parents to search for and book lessons with tutors

Project overview

This project is part of Google UX Design certificate, and focused on social good. Recent crises such as the pandemic and conflicts have made more people need to learn online. Families with children who struggle at school look for tutors to help them. Whereas there are teachers all over the world offering their educational services. The goal is not only to connect them, but to find the best match to make education and communication as effective and comfortable as possible.

PROJECT DURATION: January - March 2024

MY ROLE AND RESPONSIBILITIES: as a UX Designer I was responsible for conducting interviews, paper and digital wire-framing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.

Research

During my research, I asked 4 tutors and 5 parents to fill out the questionnaires about their experience and challenges. That helped to reveal the some pain points both for tutors and parents.

Parent's pain points:

It’s hard to trust a person you know very little about.
Fear to waste time. The method of teaching is unknown. No video example or a plan for the lesson. Parents not sure if this is right for their child.
Awkward to quit, when you are not satisfied with the results.
It's hard to choose. If you have a special child and specific requirements, you need a person (administrator) to help you find the best match.

Tutor's pain points:

With hundreds of tutors registered on a platform, it’s hard to be found.
Usually a tutor’s account can be found by a parent or a student, but there is no way to find students.
Students suddenly quit without giving a feedback

Personas

Based on these findings, I created two persona (a parent and a tutor) for whom I would tailor my design: Elena, a mom of three children, and Lisa, a freelance educator.

Designing a solution

User flow

I created a user flow diagram to illustrate how Elena would use a Find a tutor app to look for a tutor for her children and contact them. This diagram also shows how Elena would use the same app to set up her profile, look for job posts and interact with parents.

Wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes

For this project I decided to go with mobile first approach, because the majority of users will more likely visit the website from their mobile devices or install an app on their phones. Once the first lesson is scheduled, it will be more convenient to use the desktop version of the site.

The low-fidelity prototype illustrates the main user flow for a parent or a guardian, who would be able to look for a tutor using a search bar, apply multiple filters, choose one tutor and contact them by sending a message.

Usability study findings

The usability study of the low-fidelity prototype revealed the following:

Most users find it inconvenient to choose all the filters from one overlay page, and it's confusing that the main page does not show which filters have been chosen.
Some users noticed there is no way to create a job posting if a parent/guardian wants tutors to find them.

Both findings were taken into consideration, and changes have been made accordingly.

Mockups and high-fidelity prototypes

The next step was to create mockups for different screen sizes and high fidelity prototypes for the main user flow.

Main screen mockups for a tablet and a smartphone

Main screen mockups for a laptop

Main user flow on a smartphone

Accessibility considerations

✔️ Foreground colors and a background colors used are in compliance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

✔️ Text hierarchy has been implemented throughout the app to helps user to distinguish the different sections and information on screen as well as to ensure seamless work of screen readers

Takeaways and what's next

This project was part of Google UX Design certificate and it was meant to focus on social good. I am glad I chose this particular problem to address, as it speaks to me as a user too. The next step would be to conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the users' pain points have been effectively addressed, iterate on the design if necessary. While I was focusing on one group of users (parents/ guardians) at first, next I am planning to address pain point of another group of users, which is tutors. If I did this project again, I would spend more time on paper wireframes making them more detailed before starting with digital version. It would save me time making numerous iterations on digital wireframes.

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