How to grow usage of Paper's mobile app among students grades 8-12
The Challenge
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Paper's mobile app adoption among students is extremely low compared to usage on web. How can the Paper mobile app become a larger presence among students grades 8-12?
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Business goal: Tasked mobile team with driving more usage to mobile app
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Current mobile app usage is low among all student grade levels
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App not meeting needs of our users
My Role
Lead product designer for mobile squad. Worked collaboratively with product manager, engineering manager and UX researcher to define requirements and slice 1 scope.
Main Responsibilities
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Workshop facilitation (Design Sprint) in collaboration with UX research team
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Interaction designer
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Moderated remote user research (concept testing)
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Visual Design (UI) exploration
Research - What we already know
Known student insights gained from previous onsite user research studies
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Math is the #1 topic students ask about in live help sessions today
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Students want faster help during live help sessions (tutoring)
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Students often don’t want to talk with tutors because they don’t know how to ask for help or are embarrassed that they need help
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1:1 tutoring sessions are extremely expensive and cost the company roughly $8 every session, which comes as a big cost to Paper.
Current student usage data - 2022-23 school year
Student usage data - 2022-23 school year - grades 8-12
Student usage data - 2022-23 school year - grades 8-12
How are we going to solve this problem?
Design Sprint
To quickly define the problem, gather insights, and test with users, we chose to conduct a design sprint. This approach allowed us to timebox the process, collaborate effectively by brainstorming with internal stakeholders, and have a clear path forward after one short week.
What we wanted to learn
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How can mobile become a bigger presence among our high school learners by driving more user value for them?
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How can we create an experience where mobile is the go-to platform for high school students that is separate from the current web experience and beyond just tutoring?
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We want to address problems & solutions that involve mobile as the go-to platform for high school students. We don't want to fight an uphill battle of convincing users to switch from web to mobile app.
Design sprint findings
Long term goal
The Paper mobile app is the trusted go-to product our teenage users use to holistically support their learning journey in a way that is effective, engaging, and leaves them feeling confident for life after school.
Job to be done
High school students choose to hire the Paper mobile app to make studying and learning more fun, effective, and motivating.
What success looks like
We will track the following metrics in order to better define the overall success of adding this new feature:
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Overall increase in habitual usage - repeat student usage
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Increase in overall usage
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Increase in overall student confidence
Idea generation - Crazy 8's
Winning solutions to design + test
Hypothesis
We believe that by allowing teenage students a way to get guided help on their math questions and also provide them with practice type quizzes to make them feel more confident, we will see an overall increase of repeat usage by 25%, that also shows an increase in confidence over time.
Assumptions
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Students will find enough unique value in this app that they will use it even over Google search (and potentially PhotoMath, Socratic, etc.)
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Students will want to practice similar math equations in order to gain more confidence
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Teachers will support an AI feature that gives students step by step breakdown on how to solve complex math equations
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Students will trust AI generated math solutions
Research
What we wanted to learn
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Will students find value in being able to see a step by step breakdown how to solve a math problem?
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What other similar solutions are students using and where are the gaps?
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How important is getting rapid assistance?
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How likely are students to engage with a tutor if they don’t understand step breakdown?
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How would teachers view a feature like this?
Methodologies
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1:1 moderated student interviews
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5 students - grades 8-12
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Internal - former teacher survey
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14 respondents
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Remote moderated concept testing and teacher survey
Research findings
What we learned during research - students
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Students love the idea of being able to get the help they need faster without having to talk to a tutor, but love the option that the tutor is available to chat with them anywhere throughout the process if they get stuck
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Students find it very important to see quick results and are coming to Paper because they have a very specific question they need help with and talking with a tutor takes too long
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Students reacted positively to see results that related to their question so they can try to figure it out on their own before needing to ask a tutor for help
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Students felt empowered to talk with a tutor if they got stuck anywhere throughout the process, but wanted it to be fast and efficient
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Similar solutions make you pay money and don’t offer additional tutoring support if you get stuck
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Students want an easier way to refer back to previous steps without having to go back
When talking about taking practice exams ...
"I don't want to spend time doing additional work...if I'm studying for a test, I might want to practice more."
Aabel, 8th grade student
What we learned during research - teachers
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Step-by-step guidance was generally viewed positively
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Self-guided help could be a quicker way to get help
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Educators liked that students have a chance to solve their problem before contacting a tutor
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This feature may feel a bit too close to cheating
When asked about step-by-step math solver...
"Anything I can trust as a teacher to send my students to that helps them get what they need as quickly as possible is great"
Joe Vasallo, former 9-12th grade social studies teacher
Step-by-step Ai math solver first release
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Students need to be able to take a photo, or upload a picture of their math homework and crop the photo around the equation they need solved
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Students need to be able to type out any equation
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Students should be able to see a step-by-step guided breakdown of how to solve equations, so students can understand how to get to the final solution
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Offer a way for students to chat with a live tutor at anytime throughout the process
What I learned or would do differently...
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Less is more...less participants in design sprint to foster more collaboration and attendance
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Having mobile engineers participate in the workshop kick started the collaboration process and we were able to understand more about AI/Machine early on, forcing us to have tough conversations
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Make it mandatory that important stakeholders attend and participate. Important key stakeholders only participated in portions of the Design Sprint, but needed them present for all days in order to make proper decisions