Disclaimer
This project was one where I took a break from the hustle of freelancing and working with some amazing design agencies, start-ups, and clients, and had the chance to make a project that would just let my creativity take the lead. I would not have been able to bring this to its current state without the help of my amazing team of designers along the way and for that, I’m both extremely grateful and excited to introduce to you, dear reader, “TestZen.”
About this Project
TestZen started after a series of conversations I had with overworked college students, expressing their anxieties over the next big upcoming test. It
brought back my own less-than-amazing memories of test-taking and the anxieties that surrounded it while simultaneously making me realize that when comes to specifically targeting high school to college-aged students how to manage test anxiety there isn’t any product on the digital market.
Challenge
With the gaping black hole of not having a viable digital product, website, or platform available to intersect education and wellness to specifically combat test anxiety, I ventured onto creating a mobile app that specifically addresses this growing challenge of “What will be the best ways to help students who suffer from test anxiety through a mobile app?”
Process Diagram
Research and Design Assessment
To fully assess the design process, map out tasks, and understand the best integration of design elements from wellness apps and educational apps for an encompassing app, I decided to heavily focus on user research in this case study. This allowed me to plan out the best design practices and create an overview plan for TestZen, outlining its research, design, and monetization processes.
1.) Research Process
2.) Design Process
3.) Monetization Plan
User Interviews
Given the way that TestZen was first conceptualized through a series of conversations with stressed-out students, it made sense to bypass cultivating the art of a “persona” and jump directly to user interviews. The reason was that the moment I announced this idea I had multiple students immediately ready to participate in user interviews and I decided that hearing their stories would be the best tool available to dictate exactly what a user who suffers from test anxiety needs. After interviewing for a grand total of 36 collective hours, I mapped out the results in a card-sorting map and highlighted a few specific quotes that were reoccurring in each interview.
“The rigidity of my past (high school) experiences has effected my college experience.”
-Student Participant 1, Biochem major
I felt like I just had to get straight A’s on everything, otherwise I wouldn’t have a future. So each time I took a test I felt panic setting in.
-Student Participant 2, Former Engineering major
….If I ended up with a bad grade my self esteem would just break. I felt that the only way I could prove my worth was with studying, and the only way I can show to everyone that I’m worthy is making sure I get good grades-but testing is one of the worst things ever.
-Student Participant 3, Biology major
Competitive Research Analysis
The user interviews and card sorting gave me a great lens on what users who typically experience test anxiety would want in terms of elements and components for an app. This led me to analyze three main apps on the market that focus on either education or wellness. I narrowed down my search to Calm, Headspace, and Khan Academy, given that they are apps that either focus on wellness or education. I asked my users from the interviews what they liked about it each app and the feedback below visually demonstrates some of their most favorite screens and reasons as to why they picked what they picked.
“The Welcome screen is calm and inviting”
“This seems like its being tailored to the user which I really like”
“The way the homepage is mapped out is really easy to use”
“I like being able to pick multiple things at once”
“This looks very familiar, which I think is a good thing”
UI Tool Kit
When designing the UI tool kit, I wanted the typography and the colors to be symbiotic with one another and correspond to an overall calming, “at ease” and easy to read nature. In order to properly convey that, I decided that the thematic color schemes will be blue and darker and lighter shades of blue.
First Round of Iterations
Sign up/Sign in page
Home page
Home page-item selected
AI helper screen
Mind Map Kinesthetic Learning Exercise screens
Usability Testing
I asked my creative director to run through a usability test for me and see how well they could navigate through the app. Below is some of their responses from him that I focused on to make improvements on the next phase of iterations.
“Adding more visual details here will be impactful”
“Currently, the display of test options is cluttering the top screen. Maybe adding different visual elements here would make it flow more easily to the user.”
“It would be more niched to see what specific ways this app can integrate mental health services with education. That way, students can engage with the platform more.”
“It would be nice if the chart could be more personalized for the user.”
Roadblocks and Hurdles
It wouldn’t be a case study without some roadblocks and hurdles and this one is no different. This time, it was heavily focused on having to assess which design patterns would be viable to integrate into this mobile app and how would it work within a monetization plan for long-term goals. Evidently, I took to researching some monetization plans for education apps and incorporated the details and findings in a chart which you can see in greater detail in the “next steps” section of this case study.
Revisions
Homepage
Before
After
Main Screen
Before
After
Mind Mapping results
Before
After
Sign up/Sign in page
A/B Testing
After incorporating the feedback I received from the usability testing, I did an A/B test to see what my users thought of my latest designs. The results were unanimous that in comparison to the previous designs, this was a 100% improvement in the user experience of navigating the app.
Conclusion
This theoretical app proved a powerful thing-that it’s reality is very much needed. Throughout this research and design process, it became pretty imperative to me that there is a great deal of suffering going on for our students and the lack of specific provisions we have for students and test anxiety needs to be further addressed. There is an untapped market of users who would benefit from the cross-collaboration of wellness meets education, and the next steps would include business metrics on how that integration would look like.
What I learned:
Next steps would be to make an in depth monetization plan of how to market this app and gain investors. Below is an example of a chart on how this process would preliminarily look like.
Next steps:
Credits
Special thanks to these amazing people that teamed up with me to work and have fun on this awesome project!
Creative Director
Antonio Rodriguez
Content Strategist I
Jasmin Banks
Content Strategist II
Sanam Ejaz