MWNS - Redesigning a tutoring portal

Maths, Words Not Squiggles is a tutoring business for children aged 4-18, with four learning centres across Sydney suburbs.

My role

  • Part of a team of 2 UX designers
  • Took the lead in conducting half of our research through user interviews
  • Developed user personas and user journeys based on research findings
  • Collaborative effort to develop our prototypes using Figma.

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The problem

The client had an online portal for parents. They believed there were usability issues preventing people from using it, however parents raised some different pain points in our user interviews:

  • Unable to spend enough time with the tutor
  • Unable to understand the 'curriculum tracker' feature on the portal

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Research

We started the project by delving deeper into understanding the parents of school-aged children, and what their key goals and motivations might be when signing their kids up for a tutoring service. We spoke to 4 parents who use Maths, Words Not Squiggles, as well as three parents who were not currently using after-school tutoring but may consider it in the future. We pooled our research with fellow UX designers across 12 parent conversations in order to synthesise our findings.

Some key themes stood out:    

  • Tutoring helped to build their child’s confidence (not just about academic achievements)
  • Many parents really valued having a quick chat with the tutor to gain feedback on their child's progress, however sometimes the tutors are running back to back lessons, so time is short
  • The online portal is confusing and difficult to use, so many parents actively avoided using it, preferring to call Maths, Words Not Squiggles directly for any admin tasks such as lesson rescheduling or payment
  • Usage of the curriculum tracker was low, as parents found it difficult to understand

Initial findings

From talking to parents we identified three key areas of opportunity for Maths, Words Not Squiggles to develop further within their online portal:

  • The ability to understand what happened in the lessons more clearly, and to be able to contact the tutor
  • A curriculum tracker that was visual, tangible and more easy to understand
  • A more intuitive lesson calendar and rescheduling capability

Rescheduling lessons was a moderate pain point, however many parents didn’t need to do this very often, or were happy to call up to manage this if needed.  

We felt that the ability to track progress and have more meaningful discussions with the tutor were more important features not only to parents, but also to develop trust and value in Maths, Words Not Squiggles service.

Understanding users

Through the research and identifying the key pain points of parents using the tutoring service, we developed two key user personas. Hannah (persona 1)  just wants her daughter Aurelia to feel more confident in her schoolwork. She really values talking to her tutor after the class and wishes there were more opportunities to do this.

Jen (persona 2) chose Maths Words Not Squiggles because wants her son Sam to keep up with his classmates, but finds the online curriculum tracker confusing.

User testing

After synthesising our research and developing personas to understand our users better, we were ready develop a prototype with some potential improvements for the company. We tested the prototype with 4 parent users, focusing on developing out a dashboard for parents to be able to quickly gain insights on student progress. We identified the following:

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Parents liked the structure of the teachers notes

The structured format of the feedback report was received well. Parents appreciated this as currently they were not experiencing any consistency in the length and content from different tutors.

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The mood/confidence trackers had a muted response

What was wrong:

  • Some parents did not see the value in this, or didn’t feel it was tutors job to report on this. They would prefer to have a conversation with the tutor about their child’s behaviours.

How we fixed it:

  • Mood and confidence trackers removed and replaced ability to book a 1 on 1 with tutor to have more structured time to see how their child is progressing.
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Curriculum summary was still confusing to many

What was wrong:

  • Some parents did not understand what they were looking at, or how it related to their child’s progress. No parents realised that ‘view more’ button would reveal more information about curriculum.

How we fixed it:

  • Curriculum summary simplified and improved - now shows a metric (% completion) of the child’s current studies against their school year curriculum.

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Final design

A second iteration tested well with participants, in particular:

  • Better comprehension of the curriculum tracker with parents able to understand the percentage of the subject covered in tutoring for that particular school year
  • Positive response to bookable slots with teachers, to allow some deeper context of how their children are tracking

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Conclusions

Whilst the founder and owner of the business was initially focused on the shortcomings of the portal in relation to admin tasks, parents were actually more concerned with how their child was progressing, and having meaningful conversations with their child’s tutor.

Delving deeper with parents was eye opening - they all saw the value of tutoring beyond not only academic achievements, but how it grew their child’s confidence and ability to manage school more holistically.

There are still more opportunities to improve the online portal further through usability enhancements to rescheduling and invoicing, to meet the needs of parents and to drive further efficiencies and growth of Maths, Words Not Squiggles.

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