Education First App User Research
Context
Education First (EF) is an international education company that specializes in language training, educational travel, academic degree programs, and cultural exchange. It owns 500 schools & offices in 55 countries, with 37,000 employees.
With the rapid progress and widespread use of mobile technology, OneLeap was tasked by EF Kids & Teens to understand how mobile technology can better support parents and EF schools. The three goals we want to achieve are:
Discover parents needs across China, Russia, and Indonesia
Validate the early mobile concept in the planning of mobile app
Find early usability issues
We worked with EF to conduct contextual enquiries, in-depth interviews and user testing across 3 countries. The final report demonstrated users' desirability to the new app with a deeper understanding of their English learning journey and uncovered issues regarding the new app's functionality and usability.
Research Methods
User Research
We went to different EF schools to meet with EF parents. Before talking to them, we observed the school environment. For each participant, we conducted an in-depth interview and a user testing, followed by a debrief within the project team.
Contextual Enquiry
We immersed ourselves in the schools and observed kids, parents and EF employees. We collected information applying the POEMS methodology (People, Objects, Environment, Messages, and Services). Through direct observation, we were able to put ourselves in teachers and parents’ shoes. It informed us of what was actually happening in schools.
1-on-1 Interview Session
In each interview, our moderator led a conversation with participants as other team members sat behind to observe and take notes. The interviews helped us understand the EF parents' responsibility and their school journey.
User Testing Session
Before the testing, a fully interactive low fidelity prototype was built to inform the functionalities and features of the early concept.
The participants were presented the interactive prototype and could click through it. While browsing the app, testing tasks were carried out and researchers observed how the participants completed the tasks. The testing uncovered the desirability of the concept and early usability issues.
Data Analysis
Coding Data
After the user research, we had a total of 42 hours of research video footage. A major challenge was to analyze the data effectively.
We used our own data coding framework to document observations. The framework helped us track the number of successes and failures to complete testing tasks and the number of participants who needed a certain feature.
Generating Insights
We generated our insights centered on country insights, functionality issues, and usability issues.
The typical data analysis method, Observation-Insights-Opportunity method, was used. We looked for patterns in meaning. Observations were clustered by meaning and implication to generate insights. This process was iterative as we kept evolving the clusters as we moved through the data.
Similar insights were clustered further to create high-level insights and recommendations.
Report Generating
Delivering Actionable Recommendations
The final report was a handbook that included actionable recommendations for the project team to develop the app further.
From a macro level, it demonstrated users' desirability to the new app across the 3 markets with a deep understanding of their English learning journey. From a micro level, it uncovered the app's functionality and usability problems.