Homework Answers

IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEMS

To begin, I took time speaking with the app’s founders to determine their current primary pain points — in order to determine which of them could be solved through design. We identified the following problems:

• There was currently a lack of users converting to paid subscriptions after a free trial period. This was leaving investors unhappy and is what prompted the company to also decide to evaluate their offering and rebrand with an updated app and new features. 
  

• With that said, the second problem to solve for was the need for a complete visual rebrand to match the product’s name change from Toot to Homework Answers and better address the target audience.
  

• A technical problem that I uncovered during my audit was that the entire app was built in code-only. So no design system, components, or screen designs existed in a program such as Figma.

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BRANDING FOR USERS

I proposed a quick brand sprint in order to prioritize establishing the new brand identity in order to also influence an updated UI. Working in collaboration with the Marketing Manager, I leveraged their extensive exploration of the target audience to build out three core user personas. This included both the “front end” users of the app (students) and the “back end” users (tutors) — whom each experience their own unique interfaces.

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After a deep dive into the users and types, I facilitated brand presentations for the team — starting with two directions and honing in on one final new identity for Homework Answers.

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RESEARCH + IMPLEMENTATION

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Following the re-branding phase, my focus shifted to improving the app's user experience and resolving existing issues. By synthesizing insights from user interviews conducted via Google Hangouts and on-campus with the assistance of student ambassadors, I identified key pain points for redesign. I worked with the app's founders to hypothesize which of these issues would solve the conversion issue.

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Leveraging a feature prioritization matrix, we selected high-value features with low implementation complexity. Using Jira for tracking and collaboration, I collaborated with the Project Manager and Engineer to introduce these features through design sprints — creating the next version of the application.

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PARENT FEATURE

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Addressing an urgent concern, we tackled the issue of users under 18 lacking the means to manage a subscription tutoring service, coupled with parental trust issues around sharing credit card information. This led to the development of a parent account feature that could be easily linked to a student account through a simple invitation process.

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