[Disclaimer] The design and content in this case study are based on my understanding of the product, and do not 100% reflect the actual app or business. The prototypes have also been translated into English.

Goals

Tesdopi 1.0 had a small yet strong fanbase that regularly gave feedback when the question was wrong or if there were bugs. As their user base grows, it was only natural that Tesdopi 1.0 need a redesign to scale the app in order to

• Improve its usability issues

• Add more value to the users, and accommodate more use-cases and move closer to their vision of making learning fun for high school students using their research-driven and pedagogy-focused method.

• Add a subscription model as a source of revenue to sustain the business

Project Approach - the Double Diamonds

I was grateful that Tesdopi team is very open to human-centric design. This was how I approach the project in a nutshell, of course, there are a lot of loops and iterations in between.

Empathize & Define

To understand the current stage of the products its usability issues, I did a couple of rounds of interviews and usability testings with the existing users and general high school students.

Key Insights

High school students are super busy, attending multiple extra classes and private tutoring sessions to make sure they cover all the bases for what potentially show up in their national exams.

• These lessons can be very expensive and not very effective ( students are restless by the time they go to their extra classes and the class size can be up to 100+ students)

• They have low tolerant to mistakes and would likely give up if they get a lot of wrong answers

• They constantly look for good resources and are using their smartphone to help them.

• Content is key

Persona

From the insights of the existing users as well as interviews with potential customers, TesDopi 2.0's user's personas are formed.

Job Stories

Below are a few job stories I defined early on for Tesdopi 2.0. I also look at what are the other products the students are currently using to do the same Job.

Ideations

Time to synthesize information and ideate solutions! I ran 1.5 days of Design Sprint with the team on weekends. It was fun, productive, and super-intensive (no kidding yeah...). It was a very important step for us to get alignment on the findings, problem space, the business goals and start sketching the solutions. The prototyping and testing component is not part of this design sprint.

First-time users vs. Regulars

We understand that the users will hire our products for different jobs, as determined earlier by the personas and job stories. Therefore, it is very important for us to think that through the different levels of the users as well. Are they just a visitor or are they regular? Are they hiring the product to improve their understanding of the lessons at school? Or they are just trying to optimize their free time, and not missing out on new materials?

The Deep Learning Loop

The success of Tesdopi lies in our ability to make our users or customers get better at studying, not just better at the subject matter. Deep learning path is the core of the product; it is the habit building loop that involves around

• Users making "investment" to follow the study path of learning and taking capacity tests after each lesson.

• The app provides "feedback" letting the users know if they really understand the content as scores and grades.

• Users set study goals, and see their progress visually, which motivates them to complete their goals.

• Users also get coins as a "reward" for all their "actions" and all the "investments" made within the app.

• The users then see their performance (scores) compared to their peers—a gamification element and social cue that further motivate and incentivize the users to keep coming back.

Design to reflect the content

Content is the key. We know the variety of questions and test format make the learning experience through Tesdopi more effective, engaging, and reflective of the exams in real life. So the UIs were designed to accommodate all these.

Adding Fun and Humanizing the experience

Inspired by Duolingo's gamification and friendliness, we also decided to have a character of our own. I designed the cat and give it some personality but mainly try to keep the character simple and can be easily modified to express multiple emotions and be friendly for simple animation.

(Testings + Iterations) x a lot

I did multiple rounds of testing and prototyping along the way to refine the product. In addition to testing the prototype, I also attempted to test the desirability of the product as well in addition to some of the paid models we thought of.

" This is totally different."

"So much fun!"

"Never seen such an engaging fun learning app. I love this!"

Tesdopi 2.0

In the process of writing this case study, I did check back in with Tesdopi team and see how the product is going as well as for their feedbacks.

The team has shared with me insights on the first 3 months of Tesdopi 2.0

Updated as of end of 2021

Final Thoughts

It is a rare opportunity to work on a visionary product, but a rarer opportunity to work with a team that is so passionate about the mission, and would go out and beyond to provide value to their users. I learned a lot about education and teaching methodology from the team.

Writing case studies, allow me to look back at my work, think through the process I did, and most important find out what I could have done better. And here are a few things:

• More research into existing products and competitor landscape. We took a lot of inspiration from amazing apps like Duolingo and Khanhan Academy with its gamification, and habit-forming behavior. While the language could be a challenge (because some of the students only speak Khmer), seeing these products already existed, I could have done usability testing with these products just to see what users really like and what doesn't work. This could really speed up the ideation process and could unearth interesting insights.

• Visual's hierarchy and the paradox of choice. In my attempt to make the product fun visually ( to compensate for the seriousness of the subject matter) has probably led to the overuse of bright colors and hence could result in visual overload. My usability testing was lacking some context as the users during the test only interacted with the products a couple of times. So, the first impression was amazing. Have I test it in context, however, I would probably find out that if the user opens the app every day and study a long period of time, the colorful interface may not work well.