Overview
An application helping parents enroll into the right school for their children.
Snappify is a solo project that I worked on while at the Flatiron School.
Duration
Nov - Jan (8 weeks)
Role
UX Researcher
Product/UI Designer
Team
Cross-functional designers, developers
Design Challenge
HMW create an app to improve the school enrollment process for parents?
Preview
Providing personalized choices through filtering schools by your specific needs and location.
Users can seamlessly access recommended schools personalized for them by their searches.
Schools show in detail their specific requirements and curriculum in regard to their enrollment and classes.
Users can save their recommended schools by one tap.
Users will be able to schedule a one on one chat with the educators to get a better insight on their school.
Plan school tours ahead of time and be able to gather information before hitting submit.
Snappify allows you to
Connect with schools around your neighborhood
Contact teachers along with other staff
Schedule tours, all at the palm of your hand!
Research
User Research
Interviews revealed 3 pain points in their school search experience.
I conducted 5 interviews with parents to understand their needs and frustrations. To my surprise, here’s what those pain points were;
Design opportunities
I built a feature plan to start off with, to structure and organize my idea flows.
I took important mainstream flows across existing apps, assuming that they would help our users by taking inspiration of their onboarding and filtering systems.
I took insights and brainstormed ways to translate that into a solution that could help assist parents to prevent any overwhelming situations.
Design
How Might We
HMW provide a way for parents to easily access reliable information to discover the best schools.
Key Points
Easy navigation for less tech-savvy individuals
Roles and passwords to highlight safety
Debt as a flow, but adding ways to streamline the payback process
Creating a persona
Let’s meet Karianne.
After having a clear portrait of who target users are, I created the user persona to represent key audience segments. It helps me tackle the most critical problems and address the significant needs of the most important user groups.
To guide myself further in design and visualize the process by which Karianne interacts with a product to achieve her goals and identify areas of frictions during Karianne's experience, I created a journey map.
Logo & Branding
After taking in the previous information, I created a mood board for the application.
I also refered to persona to make a decision on what kind of brand Karianne would want to engage with. I picked the color palette, that was easy on the eyes, but yet playful and charming. The color inspiration came from the typical palette used in pre-schools. The blue tones create a somewhat trustful appearance while hints of yellow created a happy atmosphere. Not only that, but I then ultimately narrowed them down to the final logo, which could be best reflect Snappify's brand identity. The initials SN would have a child like font that would also be able to have children interact with the app as well.
High Fidelity Prototype
Mobile high-fidelity prototype, Ready to test
After my findings, I constructed my prototype;
There are fewer tasks on the navigation bar where it’s easier for the user to navigate through the application, preventing any confusion.
It’s straight to the point with an easy execution for the users.
There is a heart animation that alerts the user about their favorite schools.
Every time the user clicks on the navigation bar, it lets the user know where they are but highlighting the icon.
What I learned
This project was my first time designing an end-to-end mobile app which provided me with an excellent opportunity to learn mobile design and practice my design skills. I'm glad that I have an opportunity to deep dive into iOS Human Interface guidelines to better understand how I should design apps that bring more pleasant & desirable experiences for mobile users.
Gain an understanding of the lack of resources that are out there for parents to use when it comes to making hard decisions in regard to their child's enrollment.
Learn how the crucial role of UX writing & microscopy plays to guide users clearly and precisely. This ensures that users can achieve their goals with minimal friction while interacting with the app, especially during onboarding flows.
Prioritization strategies. After having tons of ideas from the brainstorming session, I had to step back and be realistic about what was feasible within the time constraints and decide which ones to prioritize for implementation. The persona & user journey helped cut out distractions, guided me to pin down the minimum viable product (MVP) amidst various constraints.
What would I have done differently?
I would have coupled with another designer or business partner to brainstorm ideas and develop concepts for the designs. It's challenging to come up with a new app concept on your own, and it would have been beneficial to have someone ask tough questions and poke holes in the business plan, so I could strengthen it.
I would want to do more 1-on-1 interviews with SME to deeply understand the subject and industry to facilitate technology to deliver solutions that empower users to stay organized when it comes to making a hard decision.
Moving forward
Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed.
Go back to the feature roadmap and explore other aspects of the social feature that could potentially be implemented in the future to provide useful insights to users.