Class Equity
Project | CASE STUDY
MVP
Client: CLASS EQUITY (bootcamp exercise)
Year: 2022
Duration: 14 DAYS
Team: GEORGINA GOMEZ OMATI | STEPHANIE PINTO RIBEIRO | BRUNO LEON
Role: UX DESIGN | UI DESIGN | BRANDING
Tools: FIGMA | ADOBE PHOTOSHOP | GOOGLE FORMS
Achievements: RUNNER UP IN IRONHACK BOOTCAMP CONTEST
Project Overview
As the final project of the UX/UI Design bootcamp, alongside with class mates Georgina Gómez Omati and Stephanie Pinto Ribeiro I had to build a digital product with a real client that we had to choose out of different options given by the bootcamp teaching team. In our case we decided to work with a company called ClassEquity.
The goal was to identify one problem and work on it trying to implement the practices and methods previously learned during the bootcamp.
Intro
The answer is yesterday.
And although we can’t change the past, we can educate today's children, which are tomorrow's adults. And precisely this premise relies on the raison d'être of ClassEquity.
From the combination of Finance, Education and Children, ClassEquity was launched in August of 2021 by Katie Draper Gracey and Abby Coyle, two entrepreneurs from the United States whose mission, in their own words, is to increase economic mobility by empowering students to become financially responsible. They plan to do so thanks to classEquity, a platform that allows teachers to build a classroom economy.
A classroom economy consists of the following main components: classroom jobs, bills, bonuses, fines and a classroom store. All pieces are fully optional and customizable so that teachers can create a system that works best for them and their students.
Research
Interviews
After conducting interviews with the stakeholders Katie and Abby to better understand the platform, we also had the chance to interview some teachers that had been using the platform in their schools with students.
Because they knew the platform perfectly, they gave us very good feedback on the things that in their opinion should be improved. It was great to hear that despite the difficulties of an MVP, they were absolutely amazed by the possibilities of the platform and how motivating it is for the students.
Competitors Analysis
From the analysis of the competitors, through our own research and everything the stakeholders shared with us, we learnt about a product that was new to us putting special interest in those aspects that we would later on apply to ClassEquity. In this way, we could see that there is only one platform focused only in financial literacy, but there are others that are very well established in the schools.
The research process was useful to gather data, whose analysis led us to identify the following main pain points:
Monitoring the job tasks by the teachers can only be done in paper.
The list of ‘To Do’s‘ in the teachers dashboard “can be overwhelming”.
The information architecture and the UI do not facilitate intuitive navigation.
Teachers can not add a second teacher to the class.
Up until here, the real challenge was to decide what we wanted to focus on. And because we had interviewed different teachers who had been using the platform, and most importantly, because we were gonna have the chance to test our ideas with them, we decided to focus on the teachers' experience in the platform and how we could make it better.
Problem Statement
Teachers need a better flow and a better overview of the students and ”to do’s” because now it is difficult to keep an eye on all students’ assignments at the same time.
Hypothesis Statement
We believe that by improving the overall flow of the platform and creating a better overview (dashboard) for teachers, we could help them reduce time and stress, improve the usability of the platform and get the most out of it.
User Persona
In order to empathize with our real users, we created an archetypical user whose goal and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of teachers. In this way we created the fictional representation of Emily Johnston, a 38-years-old teacher and single mother of an 8 years-old- kid
Emily always knew that one day she’d become a teacher, and today she thinks it would be great to find a way to teach her students real-world skills, such as financial literacy. But to do so, she has to monitor everything her students have to do which requires a lot of paperwork and effort, especially when she tries to implement some educational games within the class.
So how might we help Emily and all teachers?
Ideation
The first decision was to rethink and reorganize the architecture info. Meaning, that the first change was to simplify the navigation bar and create a home screen.
Our second decision was to have easy access to the tasks and the overview of what the students are doing by adding a side column on the home page.
The other page we changed was the my classes where we improved the overview of the students, we created the feature of adding a co-teacher and we put the set up of the jobs, rent and everything related to the class within the classroom.
Testing
We validated the lo-fi main changes with the stakeholders and we tested them both with active users (teachers) that had been using the platform since it was launched, and with new users that had had no interaction with the platform before. This process helped validate lots of our design decisions, but also gave us insights to improve the usability and the user flow.
Moodboard
To transition from the written and conceptual language to the visual language we put together an arrangement of images, materials, and pieces of text intended to evoke or project a particular style or concept. We created a moodboard.
Then we worked on the visual design making changes that were aligned with what we heard on the interviews. Teachers were asking for a more friendly platform so we created a new logo, color palette and UI elements.
