TLDR;

In the thriving private tutoring sector of Hong Kong, students face the challenge of spending extended time seeking the perfect tutor. This difficulty arises from the abundance of educators and the lack of a specialized platform for tutors to present their profiles. As a result, students often encounter unsatisfactory sessions and financial wastage due to the struggle of finding a tutor who aligns with their needs and expectations.

Introducing Tutorme – your solution to the age-old struggle of finding the perfect tutor. With a cutting-edge booking system, filtered search options, authentic reviews, and a seamless messaging platform, this application redefines the way students connect with their perfect tutors. Say goodbye to endless searches and hello to a personalized and efficient learning journey!
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I was the sole designer and researcher. I conducted discovery research, created user personas and user journeys, identified four solutions, tested designs, and designed a working prototype of the end-to-end experience.
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Jump to Final Designs

empathize

First, I wanted to understand how students searched for tutors

What methods or websites did they use? What specific problems did they face in the process? How did they decide who to hire? Were the tutoring sessions up to expectations? How do they discuss salary?

I conducted 5 interviews and created a survey that was completed by 39 students (High School and University).

Since I faced time constraints, the survey helped me gain a better overall understanding of my target audience and also confirmed that this was a problem many students faced. Afterwards, I conducted interviews to gain deeper clarification on the insights that were recurring in the survey.

Key Takeaways:

Where do students find tutors?

Students find tutors through facebook groups, tutoring companies, flyers, and word-of-mouth

"Tutors here charge a lot, and it's disappointing when you spend money on a tutor who doesn't help you improve. It's not just the money, but the time I invest in searching and attending sessions that leaves me frustrated." - Sarah, 18

"It's frustrating to search for a good tutor when you're already overwhelmed with schoolwork. I've ended up with tutors who were unreliable or just not a good fit, which has seriously impacted my grades." - Jacky, 19

Competitive analysis helped me understand the capabilities and features of the discover to purchase experience from a consumer's perspective

I analyzed both direct and indirect competitors of tutoring platforms. Since there were a small number of tutoring applications, I also analyzed marketplace applications that were very popular in Hong Kong to understand how their users go through the discover to purchase journey.

defining the user problem

Used insights to construct a user persona to represent the target audience

Meet Lauren Lee: a 16 year old, hard-working high schooler who has a low-budget and is stressed about upcoming university entrance exams.

‍Using Lauren’s persona, I created a user journey which highlights her pain points with the tutoring process. The four pain points from the user journey reflects the three main takeaways highlighted in the user research section.

User Persona : Lauren Chan with needs, frustrations listed

Lauren's user journey of finding a honors chemistry tutor with pain points highlighted

problem

Students have the most trouble searching for a tutor that fits their requirements and lives up to expectations.

This leads me to my hypothesis: Once students are able to find that perfect tutor, most of their frustrations in the user journey will cease to exist.

How might we help students easily find the perfect tutor?

Selected lo-fi explorations, where I explored the end-to-end experience of discovering and booking a tutor

After brainstorming layouts, I selected my favorites and created a cleaner set of screens for my first iteration. These are a few of the key screens:

refining my designs

I conducted user testing with 7 participants in-person and over Zoom

The objective of the test:
• Observe if users can accomplish the specified task. If they made a mistake, can they recover?
• Identify areas of opportunities to improve user performance and satisfaction.

After compiling insights, I iterated my initial designs based on common user feedback. Click on tabs below to see some of the design changes and rationale.

Redesigning the User Interface

After receiving feedback, I decided to restart my designs with lo-fi wireframes. I made the mistake of diving into hi-fidelity wireframes without a definite vision for the intended look and feel of the user interface. This time around, I made sure to keep content in a grid layout, create a component library to keep my application consistent, and employ an atomic design mindset.

the prototype

Main Features

Book and confirm tutoring sessions

Message and discuss logistics

Filter search to match specific requirements

Upload and view Reviews about every tutor

Pain Point #1: HMW help Lauren hire tutors easily?

Booking System

In-app booking system allows Lauren to schedule a session with a tutor all in one application. There would be no need to use third-party applications to discuss logistics or negotiate prices.

Users send an offer with the time, price, subject, location, and additional notes included. If the offer looks good, the tutor will accept and finalize the session.

Pain Point #1: HMW help Lauren hire tutors easily?

Messages

Chat capabilities allows Lauren to discuss location, prices, and other logistics before booking a time with a tutor.

Lauren can address all her questions and avoid miscommunication before, during, and after the session.

Pain Point #2: HMW Lauren find a tutor for university examinations in her price range?

Filtered Search

Filtered search decreases the amount of time Lauren spends scrolling to find a tutor in her price range, location, subject, etc.

This feature allows Lauren to set a specific price range and select a specific subject, then be able to quickly view all tutors that fit those two categories.

Pain Point #3: HMW help Lauren ensure her tutor will live up to her expectations?

Reviews

Reviews allows Lauren to gauge the quality of the tutor before booking a session with them.

Reviews are only available for students to write after a session with the tutor, therefore, it is a reliable method to judge the quality of a potential session with the tutor.

Final Designs

Next Steps

Tutorme is still a work in progress! My next step is to conduct another round of usability testing to see if this latest iteration resonates with users. Instead of a component library, I want to develop a practical and adaptable design system that enhances the efficiency of translating designs into developer-ready implementations. Below are some additional features and opportunities to improve the holistic experience.

Challenges and Opportunities

Enhancing search, filtering, and sorting capabilities 🔎

One of the key features of TutorME is definitely its filter, search, and sort capabilities. Further user research would help define categories that would generate a smaller pool for users to quickly find their perfect match.

Optimizing application for desktop 🖥️

Allowing users to access TutorME on both mobile and desktop devices would create broader accessibility and compatibility. Students are avid users of both mobile and desktop devices, and providing them these options will increase usability.

Introducing Payments 💸

The end of the user journey includes paying the tutor for a session. Unfortunately, TutorME currently does not have a payment function. Not only would introducing this feature allow users to truly finish their journey in one application, but it could also prevent tutors from experiencing last minute backouts.

Takeaways!

Understanding the UX process 🚧

This project immersed me into the full UX Design process from ideation to solution. Coming from an advertising background, the design process wasn't alarmingly new to me. It was interesting to see how some aspects of UX Design was similar to the advertising process (research, design, iteration). Witnessing how interchangeable the processes are made me feel quite confident in my switch into the UX Design field.

Importance of User Research 🔬

At first, it was quite surprising how much research went into the process before you even begin designing. Nevertheless, it was very rewarding to see how the immense amount of research paid off later in the process. As someone who enjoys digging deep into understanding the root cause of problems, this was an extremely rewarding stage.

Communicating Design Decisions 💬

Coming from a background in art, I believed design was all about aesthetics. Going into this project, I designed screens just because I felt like it "looked good." But when it came to explaining why I chose to place the booking button at the very top of the screen, it didn't explain my design thinking. I learned the importance of functionality > aesthetics.

Connecting Private Tutors and Students in Hong Kong

TLDR;

Thanks for being here. ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶