Traditional school searching is tedious.
PAIN POINT
Finding schools for their children is a messy and tedious process for parents. Research shows that parents spend 1 to 3 years searching for schools for their children, and they do not feel confident they will find the right school. Three years of an insecure process, all leading up to one gut-feeling decision... yikes.
After inheriting interviews it was my job to rethink the search for schools.
Target Audience
Simplifying the School Search Process for Preschool and Transitioning Students.
Based on the interviews, I found that parents are extremely busy and touring all of their potential school options is out of the question.
I created this app with these parents in mind–whether they are looking for a school for their preschool child or looking to transition their child into a new school.
No fitter system can define a child.
IDEATION
At the outset of the project, I was able to use interview transcripts to gather pain points from parents.
What I found was:
Parents struggled to narrow down a school search. They found booking and taking tours of schools to be time consuming. Finally, all the interviewed parents said it was nearly impossible to get a hold of people who could answer specific questions they had regarding their own credentials or their child’s specific needs. My initial idea was a platform that would allow parents to specify their preferences and their child's individual requirements through two portals and a school generator. However, during the prototype phase, I received feedback that my initial concept wouldn't work; trying to categorize every child's needs for a school search engine was not only impractical but also a bad user experience. Every child is unique, and every parent has different priorities when it comes to education. Realizing my mistake, I scrapped the idea and started fresh.
Redirection
People, not portals, hold the key to finding the right fit.
After user testing and revisiting the parent interviews, I realized the workload was backwards, and I was not solving the problems that parents were running into while searching for schools. Schools should provide information to parents instead of the other way around. But even with this new approach, categorizing every aspect of a school was difficult. One user quote captured the key to redesigning the product:
"Everyone approaches this decision with a different mindset."
If that is true, one filter system cannot fit everyone's criteria. Real people are the only source of the information parents need. Ultimately, people need people to make such a difficult decision.
High Fidelity Design
NEXT STEPS
Find a frictionless way for schools to provide contacts.
Moving forward, these are the two next steps I need to take: first, explore the possibility of alumni and parents responding outside of the app; and second, convince schools to participate by showing them the value of increasing their visibility through T-school.
REFLECTION
Sketch, Talk, Toss, Repeat.
Designing T-School taught me the importance of quickly creating concepts, putting them on paper, asking for feedback and being willing to crumple up the paper and toss it in the trash.
I had a lot of really bad solutions to this problem; but, I needed to get those ideas on paper to free up space in my head for the good ideas to lead to the finished product.
