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Case study

Edtechfoundry - Differ

Edtech foundry started in 2012 with the mission for better social inclusion in higher education

Time frame

Ongoing

My role

  • Research

  • Concept testing

  • Wireframing

  • UI

  • Prototyping

  • Pen & paper

  • Sketch

  • Axure

Tools
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Differ wanted to pivot their communication software that facilitates conversation between students and teachers into a service that matches new student at university with their peers. The matching is based on self reporting questions guided with our friendly chatbot. The mission is to reduce social anxiety, easy possible loneliness and create more student engagement in class. 

The challenge
High-level Goals

  • Conduct exploratory research into how students currently find friends/study buddies in higher education 

  • Plan and conduct concept testing that matches students with peers via a chatbot interface

  • Multiple design iterations to zone in on valuable features/solutions

  • Process: Create and implement design sprints with weekly testing and feedback sessions with product team

  • Document and communicate learnings

  • Reduce stress/anxiety, while providing social buffering for stressful first days of university

My process
My process v.1.jpg
Empathy
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Product Research:
I conducted a lot of research online, looking for possible competitors in the same communication-matching systems on mobile and web.

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User Interviews:
I conducted several interviews with various universities. Firstly, ethnography was used to understand the needs, pain points, possible solutions and features to matching students in social and study groups. I took the results of these interviews and created a few different user personas.

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User persona - Stian Greffe

Ideate

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Based on my competitor analysis, heuristic evaluation and research into best practices for algorithm matching. I explored interactions and the overall experience of being matched. I hand sketched solutions with pen and paper in order to speed up the process. In the first iterations, I wanted to blue sky approach the problem and came up with distinct solutions that needed to be validated by students.

Differ concept test flow.jpg
User flow for sign up, sign in and buddy bot introductions
Prototype

  • I decided to proceed with usability testing with the strongest set of wireframes, which onboarded users into the purpose of matching students. We felt education about the matching purposes could provide a feeling of safety

  • I created an Invision prototype that incorporated chat bot onboarding with tutorial guidance

  • I used the principle of gestalt emergence - here I blurred out the faces of the initial matches that encourage users into gamified process of “unlocking” the faces and profiles. This helped us avoid visceral reactions that often occur on dating sites :)

Validate

  • Here I conducted one-week-long google design sprints on my mid-fidelity prototype on a mobile phone to see how users would react to the process and whilst complete certain tasks once they were given some context. I was curious how people would feel about being matched with other peers in a university setting. The goal was to identify pain points that could be improved in future iterations. 

  • I tested with 40 students - 5 per week for 8 weeks 

  • 1 on 1 interviews that lasted 50 minutes were conducted on several days and iterations were added on the fly

  • Added data into a affinity map 

The outcome

  • Provide detailed wireframes and high fidelity iOS screens of features, usage and animations

  • Create handoff documentation to development team

  • Onboarding users with friendly prompt of the chatbot that provides guidance, answers any questions and creating delight while user fill out their profiles

  • You can view what you have in common and start chatting directly on Differ.

Final solution

  • This is still in the works :) 

  • Here are the higher fidelity wireframes

Differ concept test final.jpg
What I learned

  • Students are lonely and desperately want to meet people from their university, especially from their course. This helps buffer them from the new stresses of being at university by having a friendly face to study and hang out with. 

  • Students are excited to see valuable, impactful matches based on personality and behavioural aspects

  • Creating solid handoff documents for the product team

  • Creating a branding UI for the concept test

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