UOK
Redesigning a well-being app used by students and teachers.
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
4 Months
Team
Product Designer
UX Researcher
Developer
Skills
User Interviews
Wire-Framing
UI Design
Prototyping
Product Overview
Skip To Solution
UOK, an application that assesses student student well-being, showed low adoption and retention rates with students when introduced into schools. This case study explores possible contributions to low student engagement rates and proposes solutions to retain student users and refine the applications experience.
cHALLENGE
Students were not using the UOK app consistently.
When taking the UOK daily check in survey, students found the experience to be repetitive, not engaging, and insufficient. Students not only were not motivated to take the survey, but they felt it did not allow them to convey how they were feeling completely or accurately.
How might we....
Encourage students to consistently and accurately convey their well-being to teachers?
![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg display="block" role="presentation" viewBox="0 0 294 262" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"/>)
before the redesign
opportunity
A reimagined UOK experience that measures student-wellbeing accurately and keeps them coming back.
Creating a personalized, engaging, and functional experience for students that encourages them to consistently & accurately complete the UOK survey, thus providing meaningful real-time insights into their well-being.
opportunity
Discovering The Painpoints.
It began with market research to get insight into the standard method of measuring students well-being. This was followed by a competitor analysis to better understand the UX and UI of well-being platforms, and their daily check-in flows. A usability audit was then conducted to evaluate how the current UOK UX and UI compare to market standards. Lastly, user interviews were conducted to identify opportunities to provide qualitative and emotional insight into key points of the user journey.
Methods
- Secondary Research (Market Research & Competitive Analysis)
- Primary Research (Usability Audit & User Interviews)
Barriers
Why are students not satisfied with the current UOK experience?
Definition
Qualifying how to measure student well being?
The Original App.
Usability Audit
login
1
2
Survey
3
4
5
Feedback
6
hover over a number to see details on the pain point
Each number highlights a pain point within the original app design. The usability audit uncovered issues with accessibility, consistency and clarity in not only the flow of the survey and the questions it asked, but also in the response options provided to users and the feedback displayed once the survey was competed.
Competitive Analysis
A competitive analysis of three popular well-being applications was completed to see how they served the user. The information gleaned from the competitor benchmarking process highlighted opportunities and strengths within UOKs current survey.
Reflectly
CBT Thought Diary
Headspace
What do these apps do well?
Collect robust of data from users
Clear questions
Accessible navigation
Short and concise
Recognizable choices
Provide clear feedback
Colorful visuals
Component consistency
Personalization
opportunity
Key Insights
What was stopping students from using UOK?
User interviews with students that had been using UOK for at least one week revealed the following 3 three barriers to student satisfaction.
Convoluted Questions
Students felt they did not have the ability to answer questions accurately or completely, and were frustrated they couldn't see results.
“I can't see my results and I'd like to see how my feelings change each day.”
How is student well-being measured?
What promotes student engagement and motivation?
Ideation
Crafting A New Design.
Product Pillars
After getting a clear understanding of the challenges with the current UOK experience, three non-negotiables were identified to be incorporated into the updated experience.
Personalization
Encouraging students to keep coming back to the survey daily.
Validity
Ensuring the survey is evaluating student well-being accurately.
Feedback
Creating a space for students to connect with their survey results.
Execution
Showcasing personalization, validity, & feedback.
A Dynamic Survey Experience & Emotion Based Design System
A new design system was developed to reinforce personalization throughout the UOK check-in experience. This included creating a color palette and components that align with students' emotional states, ensuring each emotion is consistently represented by a specific color and visual throughout the interface design.
Questions Rooted In Research.
A new set of questions was created, with each one tailored to measuring student well-being based on the 5 SEL core competencies. Thus ensuring the survey is gauging students based on a standard framework understood across the educational community.
A Feedback Hub That Promotes Consistency
A new feedback hub was designed to provide students with a summary of their survey answers immediately after completion, as well as a place to track progress over time. There are also built in notification and streak filters to reinforce consistency.
Reflection
Taking Time To Reflect.
To take this project to the next level it would be great to have the opportunity to re-design the teacher interface of the UOK survey app to ensure it supports teacher engagement, understanding, and implementation of survey results in the classroom.
This project was conducted across four months, so it was not feasible to evaluate the app in practice during a full school year. It would be great to see the student response to the updated UOK Survey, and evaluate the actual increase in student engagement with the survey application and in the classroom.