Rebranding NAMU

Fall 2021 — 8 week | Skills: User Research, UX Design, Visual Design

Namu is an online tutoring platform for high school and college students. The website intends to provide a “fun and friendly” tutoring experience for students to learn.

Problem: They launched their online flow about a year ago and have very low completion rates. The business is struggling and many tutors want to leave because they are not seeing enough clients.

Task: Design an experience that helps high school and college students to discover and connect easily and quickly with their personalized tutors.

Understanding the Problem Space

After receiving a design request, I began by reviewing the current design of Namu to select points of improvement.

Here are three major problems that I have found:

1. The online flow is confusing which causes low completion rate.

2. The website does not clearly and visually state the services provided.

3. The website does not provide engaging yet time efficient experience for the users.

Research and insight

Defining a Target Audience: Going into research, my goal was to understand high school student’s process, behavior and attitude when discovering and connecting with online educational platforms. Here are my findings:

Design opportunity

1. Main Problem - It is difficult to discover and approach tutors who will fulfill users’ needs.

2. Design Opportunity - The user wants to learn and connect with tutors who are interested in building genuine connection with students and helping students to reach their academic goals.

3. Potential Entry Point - The user will start to utilize namu website more frequently in height of finding the right tutors and figuring out the best match academically.

User flow:

When analyzing the current flow, I found that steps of searching for personalized tutor was confusing and misleading as users continue to provide the same information on different pages. Even after finding the tutor, background information was very limited — for instance, having illustration of tutor instead of images.

Revised flow 2:

1. “Overview page” — to show variety subjects and different levels of studies that the website is offering

2. Placing “Payment” earlier on the user flow — to ensure user engagement

Wireframing

I sketched out some of the following features that may improve user experience:

1. Reduced number of questions for personalization: to minimize the time for discoverability to tutors

2. Personalized selection: more accurate selection of tutors

3. Tutor Biography: increase transparency of who the tutor is and what the service provides

After receiving feedback from users, Flow 1 seemed to resonate with most people because people felt the process was time-efficient, simplified the user’s journey. They have also noted that they have received the full-expected service while keeping the process engaging and informative.

“Questionnaire” section from the very beginning to optimize discoverability and allow the most relevant tutors available for students.

“About Tutor” section helps first-time users or returning users to see different tutor options to obtain essential and detailed information about them before scheduling a meeting.

“Payment” section provides step-by-step progressive bar for easy and clear navigation for users who are relatively young and are not fully convinced with the payment process.

Usability testing and iteration

Before I develop a high-fidelity Figma prototype, I had 6 interviews with high school students to test if the revised user flow is applicable for targeted audiences. After the interview, I created User Journey Map to visualize in which areas were difficult to navigate and unclear for the users. Based on comments received, I have found three main challenges:

1. Misleading navigation on “Questionnaire” and “Schedule" section

2. Overwhelming layout and information

3. Lack of user control and freedom