Created a virtual experience with an STEM Industry Professional
Third Room 
Third Room is a multi-sided managed marketplace for rural schools to access livestream STEM classes and virtual engagement with industry professionals. Because of teacher shortages and geographic isolation, among other reasons, rural classrooms lack access to STEM classes and industry professionals. Third Room Research Labs is looking to become an online marketplace for rural school teachers to book virtual engagements with STEM industry professionals to supplement their classroom lessons.
What role have I played: Lead UX Researcher
How long did I take: 3 weeks
What tools have I used:
Collaborative tools
- Figma
- Miro
- Invision
For User Interviews:
- Slack
- Zoom
Research Methods:
- Feature CC Analysis
- User Interviews
- Affinity Mapping
- Persona Creation
- Journey Mapping
- Usability Testing
Who are we up against?
We conducted a competitive analysis to better understand the competition around Third Room. Also we had an understanding of the current business models of online curriculum’applications. We analyzed the competitors websites likes Blue Studios, Nepris, K12, Proximity Learning, Out school, Microsoft Teal, and Code.org.
Competitors learnings lead us to look deeper
Plus/Delta is based on Nepris(seagreen) and BlueStudios(blue). The pluses identify items that are working and items that should be maintained and built upon. The deltas are opportunities for improvement so that the product can be more effective. It should be specific and within the realm of possibility.
Feature analysis unearthed these findings…
Several platforms that offer some form of STEM classes
1/7 platforms lets you browse their offerings without signing up
4/7 platforms does not offer STEM volunteers
No platform offers Industry Professionals volunteering in various STEM careers
6/7 platforms did not have a community feature designed for users
How user interviews turned out as eye openers
To get the most out of the interviews, we ensured that we have the right questionnaire. This way both ends know what the expectation is...
- To understand the importance of STEM
- To understand challenges of booking professionals
- To identify career professional in-person experiences (good/bad)
- To identify if class collaboration was being used in rural schools
- To understand how students are staying interested/motivated to learn STEM
Our interviewees, comprised of students who studied in rural schools and currently pursing STEM, and also Teachers who taught in rural schools. They were interviewed remotely via video conference by different members of the core team.
Secondary interviews were conducted to access the feature aspect of the teachers.
and ended up with below qualitative data.
Examine the findings into groups and theme the data with IStatement
Once the responses were on paper we all worked together to find themes and organized the data into groups. The theme were given the title with “Istatements” to summarize those findings with user perspective. This point of view made us feel like real people, helped us to create a persona, a culmination of all the findings to know better who we are designing for specifically with what are their needs and goals.
In doing so our key take away:
We found find the problem statement
How might we help the Users
...and emerged a persona
Our persona is a composite of all our research findings. Meet Mr. Cody, who helps us define the needs, goals, behaviors, and scenarios our user will be experiencing and help us in design process.
Now its time to visualize the insights
The journey map goes into what the persona is thinking, saying and doing and shows us where we can intervene and design based on those twists and turns of his journey as a rural STEM teacher
Journey map is the visualization of the design process and capture the insight and opportunity to help our potential users.
Prioritization of Features
Our design team had many different features for the application and we really needed to decide as whats valuable to our process, in given scope of time. We used MOSCOW technique as what must and should features needs to be in process.
Sketching the ideas
As part of the design, our team headed to design studios, sketched our ideas on papers and did the process of selected the best valuable design idea. Paper sketches were easy and efficient way to start the process for low fidelity wire frame.
Later, we sketched the gray scale prototypes and did usability testing . we used usability test plan for Low Fidelity sketches to test and validate our assumptions to get more refined high prototype.
Usability Test plan for Low fidelity prototype.
Followed the usability test plan template for all different usability testings in our process
Low fidelity prototypes screens
The Key take away were:
- The dashboard was not communicating our call to actions
- Our Booking and Community Hub pages also needed more substantial content. We also needed to make the body copy more friendly and engaging.
- The Booking Page had some concerns around the date and time. Users were not sure if they could just pick and choose the schedule or does the industry professional make their own options.
Recommendations-1:
- Add “searching” call to action
- Have clearer wording
- Make navigation call to actions more visible
Recommendations-2:
- Show different modulars, vary how we present the content
- Make words more engaging and friendly
Recommendations-3:
- Show only the availability of the career professional
High prototype screens ... Realization of goals and ideas
The key take away were:
Users thought that hanging cards were a layout mistake
Request Now” page should always be on one page, if possible.
The word “Now” is misleading - makes users think the IP is immediately available.
Recommendations-1:
Consider replacing or getting rid of the hanging card and putting an arrow there.
Recommendations-2:
Raise text and reformat layout
Interactive Prototype that gave life to our application
What next...
Marketing:
Homepage and dashboard hub “heroes”
Incorporate the idea of having things in 3’s
Design logo
Filter categories
Develop industry side based on teacher side interactions
Further research how teachers interact on social platforms
Find lead teachers to contribute to the community and be examples
Final Iterated Prototype