Background
Based on the top-voted customer feedback below and actual usage for parent-teacher conferences on Teams during the pandemics, we have realized how crucial communication is between K-12 teachers and parents. Therefore, we took the initiative to explore the opportunity and solutions for this new segment.
My Role
Lead design for the educator’s experience. I worked closely with the core feature team and 3 cross fnpartner teams.
Discover
How do teachers communicate with parents & guardians before/during pandemics?
To understand our customers' needs, I collaborated with our user researcher and PM on a survey and conducted interviews with 24 teachers and school leaders globally. This research revealed key insights into their current systems, behaviors, pain points, motivations, and cultural differences, informing our design strategy.
Key findings
Not just another tool to use.
Easy access to parents’ contact info.
Private message + Announcements + Assignment sharing are essential.
Be inclusive & equitable.
Opportunity
A Hub for all communication needs
Announcements
Private message
Assignments / Grades / Insights
Parent-teacher conference
Ideation
To align on key challenges and solutions, I facilitated a remote Figma design sprint with stakeholders across disciplines. This collaborative session enabled us to share research insights, define problem areas, and brainstorm innovative solutions together.
Challenges 1
I explored a couple of models and did a pros&cons analysis. In the end, we landed on model 2 as our hypothesis by considering the goals and various constraints.
Where do Teachers expect to communicate with Parents & Guardians in the classroom?
Challenges 2
We prioritized the features based on the RICE framework (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Efforts).
I created a UX framework that drives the product strategy of where the elements in different stages can be naturally connected so that users don’t need to relearn the existing features and find whereabouts.
How might we reduce the user learning curve in the crawl, walk, run stages?
Hypothesis
We believe that adding parent contact info in the classroom will enable teachers to reach out to parents easily when needed.
Validation
We conducted 3 rounds of user testing with K-12 educators in flash feedback and UserTesting.com during multiple iterations. After the sessions, I created the reports and shared the findings with the feature team to inform the product and design decisions.
What we've validated:
The success rate to complete the tasks
UI Model - Onboarding, entry point & user flow
Feature prioritization to inform the scope
User quotes from user testing sessions
“This design is well-made and well-organized. Well done!”
– Testergirl44, female 34, USA
“I think the whole flow is fairly easy, pretty sure non-tech-savvy parents can learn it very easily as well.”
– somiraju, female 36, USA
“I’m happy because there is a privacy consideration, so parents won’t feel awkward to reply.”
– lelemakesIT, female 25, Philippines
Outcome
Impacts
Customers’ quotes from the Beta release:
“Huge time saver! Having access to parent & guardian contact info on Teams makes my life easier. No need to access school SIS.”
- Chris, High school teacher, UK
“Ability to chat with parents guardians seems quick and easy.”
- Katie, Middle school teacher, NC, US
My Contributions
Plan & facilitate the design sprint, create design visions, user flow, conduct user testing, prototypes, final visual, UX project management, cross org/team collaborations & communications.
Create simple, intuitive, and feasible design solutions that customers, leadership, my counterparts PM and engineers support.
Land the final design with multiple stakeholders and partner teams, including 4 PM, 4 designers, and 2 engineering teams.