Easy Reschedule

As a team of 4, we designed a user experience flow for rescheduling meetings between middle school teachers and parents as part of a business pitch for a seed company aiming at creating a school-related software, to liberate teachers from heavy daily administration tasks including teacher-parent communication.

UXDesigner
UXResearcher

Role

49d

Timeline

Why is communication with parents taking up so much effort for teachers?

User Scenario

Work, Life, No Boundary...

Let’s pretend you are the teacher, Mr. Clyde. One of your students, Han, had a physical altercation during class a few days ago. According to the Law, you have to schedule a meeting with his parents...

Problem

How might we make it more effortless for teachers to continuously
follow up with parents?

Process

Steady Steps We Took

Why is solving the above problem a good starting point for this seed company?

"Bucketing" Activity

It Bothers the Most!

We conducted 5 "bucketing" activities, where participants listed their daily tasks and then sorted them according to different criteria.

Among all tasks, parent-teacher communication stood out because:

  • 4 out of 5 participants: it is #1 most frustrating

  • 3 out of 5 participants: Among the top 2 most time-consuming

  • 3 out of 5 participants: Among the top 2 most relevant to success as a teacher

Competitive Analysis

Be the First to Fix This Major Pain Point for Teachers!

We conducted a study on the key features and user feedback of 7 major competitors and found that the asynchronized communication features between teachers and parents especially the meeting rescheduling feature has received major complaints. This directly leads to blurring of the boundaries between teachers' work and personal lives.

Low-Fi Prototyping & Iteration

Iteration Through User Testing

Specialty

Key Features of Our Solution

Automated Communication History
Ability to automatically connect parent-teacher communication history into school-wide administrative systems, so that teachers don't have to enter it manually.
Asynchronous Meeting Scheduling
Creating asynchronous meeting request feature  for teachers to schedule meetings with parents can ensure that teachers' personal time is not disrupted while also making the communication more reliable and well documented.
Clear Visual Confirmation for
Every Action
Teachers often have to use fragmented time to handle communication with parents and are frequently subject to external distractions. Clear confirmation at each step can reduce cognitive load.
Future Steps

Expanding One Experience to a Comprehensive Eco-system

  • Integrations/Compatibility: How can it be integrated with other commonly used tools (e.g. Google Calendar)?
  • Easy to Learn: How can we make it easier for less tech-savvy teachers to learn this tool?
  • Product Cohesion: How will this feature be integrated with the rest of the application's features?
  • Import & Export Data: How can data be imported and exported in batch?
  • Privacy: Data privacy - DOE requirement