instro

instro

Instro provides an easy and efficient way to search for an instructor, enroll for a pilot session and schedule classes for learning a skill. One can also be an instructor and leverage their skills using the same platform.

Project type
Academic
timeline
Oct'21 - Dec'21
team members
Shariwa Malankar, Sagar Mhatre, Vanya Srivastav, Vishal Phalke
tools
Adobe XD, Miro
role
UX Researcher and Designer
Project type
Academic
timeline
Oct'21 - Dec'21
team members
Shariwa Malankar, Sagar Mhatre, Vanya Srivastav, Vishal Phalke
tools
Adobe XD, Miro
role
UX Researcher and Designer
Key Contributions
  • Conducted research by interviewing various students and instructors
  • Brainstormed solutions, created storyboards, and ideated the details of the final solution based on the research insights and goals
  • Created user flow and created paper and high fidelity prototypes
  • Conducted user and expert evaluations of the product

overview

problem space

People often want to pursue their hobbies or follow their passion, but they give up due to lack of motivation or a push.
The ones who are motivated, however, find it difficult to find a right instructor who can teach them at their pace, understand their way of learning and most importantly, who is reliable and trustworthy.

design challenge

    Easing process of finding a suitable instructor who is skilled, verified and nearby.

The solution

Instro is an application that efficiently connects the learners with suitable instructors from their social circle and vicinity. Learners can make an informed search for instructors teaching a particular skill and enroll for in-person sessions with them.

There is more!
This application also helps users in leveraging their skills by allowing them to be an instructor on the same platform.
User's homepage
User location
Instrument Search
Instructor Profile
Recommendations
Ratings
Distance
Instruments taught
Details
Connection level
user's screen to schedule a pilot session
Questionnaire to understand specific student requirements by the instructor
Add any special notes or requirements or if you need an instrument
Pick a date from the available days
Pick  from available time slots
Set reminders
Jump to the solution screens
Or
Keep scrolling to view the detailed case study
design process
Lets have a look at our Design Process
01.understand
understand

data gathering

why

Many self-learning platforms, teaching various skills, are available in the market.

We conducted research
  • to understand the gaps in these platforms
  • to know the learner's expectations from them.
Literature Review
To understand effective ways of learning various skills
Competitive Analysis
To know the offerings and gaps of Coursera, Udemy, Youtube, Skillshare etc
Literature Review
To understand effective ways of learning various skills
Competitive Analysis
To know the offerings and gaps of Coursera, Udemy, Youtube, Skillshare etc
Interviews
Interviewed 10 participants of age 18 to 35 to know their expectations from courses, instructors and overall learning experience

insights

problems with the existing platforms
We asked the participants about their opinions about the current learning platforms available. Here is what they said...
The content is very generalized andit is hard to stay motivated without in-person guidance and feedback.
Difficult to learn skills like music or dance online.
  • A novice learner may still struggle to comprehend material and require some guidance to simplify it.
    ‍
  • Self-paced learning is difficult for people who lack proactiveness and self motivation.
    In-person learning ispreferred as it is more engaging.
  • Skills like music or dance are very difficult to follow online, without anyone correcting the mistakes if any.
    ‍
The content is very generalized andit is hard to stay motivated without in-person guidance and feedback.
  • A novice learner may still struggle to comprehend material and require some guidance to simplify it.
    ‍
  • Skills like music or dance are very difficult to follow online, without anyone correcting the mistakes if any.
    ‍
Difficult to learn skills like music or dance online.
  • Self-paced learning is difficult for people who lack proactiveness and self motivation.
    In-person learning ispreferred as it is more engaging.
user expectations
When asked about their expectations, they raised a number of points mentioned below...
I want a skilled instructor who can teach in a way I can easily learn.
I generally go where my friend is going. They have good reviews
It would be great to have a trial session before enrolling.
  • They wanted a dedicated instructor who can understand their learning technique and mold the ways of teaching accordingly.
  • People take from the suggestions of friends or relatives who have experience learning from an instructor and can get genuine reviews.
  • Some wanted to have demo sessions before enrolling to get the grasp of instructors learning technique.
  • Difficult to find an instructor easily for in-person teaching.
I want a skilled instructor who can teach in a way I can easily learn.
  • They wanted a dedicated instructor who can understand their learning technique and mold the ways of teaching accordingly.
  • Difficult to find an instructor easily for in-person teaching.
I generally go where my friend is going. They have good reviews
  • People take from the suggestions of friends or relatives who have experience learning from an instructor and can get genuine reviews.
It would be great to have a trial session before enrolling.
  • Some wanted to have demo sessions before enrolling to get the grasp of instructors learning technique.
analyze

Design Goals

We derived four goals that our solution should strive to achieve, based on the insights we gathers from our research.
compatibility
Facilitate compatibility between the instructor and learner
authenticity
Authenticate instructors and their skillset
trust
Build trust between the learner and instructor
engaging experience
Provide a more engaging and personalized experience to learners

the Dilemma

But the scope is too
wide
We realized that the scope of the project is too broad in terms of users and skills
1. User base too large
Another round of interviews helped us to understand the intentions of learning new skills amongst the individuals
Students wanted a formal education, in a classroom like setting, as they usually choose it as a career path.
Whereas working individuals
  • are looking for informal type of learning experience
  • have time on weekends and passion to pursue their hobbies
  • Find it tedious to look for instructors when they move to new city
Therefore we first
Scoped down the user base
problem
Target user base is very large
Reason
Everyone can access online platform
Observed
Working people want
a hobby
Insight
Because they always move for jobs
New Scope
Working individuals of
age 18-35
problem
Target user base is very large
Reason
Everyone can access online platform
Observed
Working people want
a hobby
Insight
Because they always move for jobs
New Scope
Working individuals of
age 18-35
2. Too many skills on platform
We conducted a survey that listed categories of skills like communication skills, indoor sports, outdoor sports, vocational skills, hobbies, music, art, etc.
Music was one most popular skill people wanted to learn asa hobby and preferred to learn in a in-person setting as well
Hence we selected 'learning musical instruments' as a scope to establish a right direction for our our solution
Next, we
Scoped down the skill set
problem
Too many skills like academic, indoors/outdoor, hobbies
Reason
Different skills need different ways of learning, settings, etc
Observed
Want to learn hobbies in a flexible way, informally
Insight
Musical instruments were a popular choice as a hobby
New Scope
Learning to play musical instruments
It will be a beta test for further widening our scope to other variety of skills

Final project scope and constraints

  • Focusing on one skill at the beginning
         
    It will be a great to understand what works and what doesn't with one skill and then extending the platform to other skillsets.
    ‍
  • Platform only connects the learner and instructor, does not provide a platform for learning
         
    This platform will not provide any tools to conduct sessions only. It will serve only to connect the learner and instructor
    ‍
Once solved our dilemma and scoped down our project, we built our user persona and finalized our problem statement
persona

Problem statement

How might we leverage the social-collaborative system that connects the learners to instructors effectively
define

Ideation

brainstorming
Keeping our 4 design goals in mind and our problem statement handy we started our brainstorming process.
engagement
compatibility
authenticity
trust
How might we leverage
the social-collaborative system that connects the learners to instructors effectively
Our approach was to brainstorm ideas for each of our user goals and pick the best fit amongst it. Later combine the best idea of each goal and form our final solution.
STORYBOARDING
ideating the features
Once again, based on the goals, we filtered our ideas to include following key requirements of our design
Key
Requirements
1
Find the right instructor and
know his skills
2
Know if your friends took the class of that instructor
4
Verify the instructor's identity for the student's safety
6
Evaluate the instructor's skills before onboarding on platform
3
Have indicators to choose the
best-suited instructor
5
Have ways for the instructor
to understand the student better
A typical user flow on the application
We tried to sketch out how a typical user's flow will be on our application. It represents the steps a regular user will take
to search for an instructor and schedule sessions.
student onboarding userflow
According to Key feature 5, to make the instructors understand their students better, we thought of having an onboarding questionnaire for students, that includes questions on their personality type, special needs, etc.
They will be shared only with the concerned instructor.
Student onboarding flowchart
instructor onboarding userflow
  • Verify the instructor's
    1. skills for the instruments he is wanting to teach (Key feature 6)
    2. identity and authenticity (Key feature 4)
  • Creating instructor's profile (Key features 1 and 3) 
Student onboarding flowchart
prototype

wireframing

We started off with paper prototypes to chalk out our key screens. We kept on iterating them until we arrived at out final screens
Here are a few sketches of our paper prototypes.
Paper prototpes
color palette
Most of the educational platforms are in BLUE as it brings out productivity in an individual and helps improve reading comprehension and thought processes.

But our application is not aiming to be a learning platform.
‍
ORANGE
Welcoming
Motivating
Mood Lifting
Enthusiatic
getting
things
done
Exactly what we are looking for
Keeping ORANGE as our primary color, we created the following color palette.
Primary CTA 
Color
Secondary Color
Tertiary
Color
Background
Color
Primary Text
Color
Secondary Text
Color
typography
We opted for a modern sans-serif font style as we are targeting the younger user group.
Our choice was the font family Outfit as gave a modern and more friendly sense to the text and went well with our designs
Outfit
a quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
a quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
final solution
homepage
User location
Instrument Search
Instructor Profile
Recommendations
Ratings
Distance
Instruments taught
Details
Connection level
Instructor profile
About
  • Instructor's background and skill information
  • Teaching techniques and descriptions
Gallery page of instructor
Gallery
  • Images and videos of skill demonstration
Review page of instructor
Review
  • Review and ratings from students
  • Only students can write reviews
Peer endorsement page of instructor
Peer Endorsement
  • Endorsements from peers, per request
  • Peers should have matching skillsets to endorse
About Tab
Instructor's background and skill information. Description of his
teaching techniques can be found here.
Gallery page of instructor
Gallery
Images and videos of skill demonstration of the instructor or students to view
Review page of instructor
Review
Review and ratings from students. Only students can write reviews
Peer endorsement page of instructor
Peer Endorsement
An instructor can request for endorsement from other instructors with matching skillsets.
scheduling a pilot session
Questionnaire to understand specific student requirements by the instructor
Add any special notes or requirements or if you need an instrument
Pick a date from the available days
Pick  from available time slots
Set reminders
student onboarding
Select one or more
instrument to learn
Tell about personality
(optional)
  • Medical data is proteced by HIPA regulations
  • Available only to instructors to understand the student better and customize the course accordingly
Grant location access
for better recommendations
scheduling a pilot session
Select one or more
instrument to learn
Tell about personality
(optional)
  • Medical data is proteced by HIPA regulations
  • Available only to instructors to understand the student better and customize the course accordingly
Grant location access
for better recommendations
Document Verification

future scope

  • Platform can be extended to cater to other skills like sports, art, driving, etc.
  • Instructors can be evaluated for their ability to teach students with special needs.
My learnings
  • Scoping down the project is important
    Our initial scope of the project was too broad in terms of what kind of skills will be included in our solution as different skills have different ways of learning. Narrowing down the scope to effectively communicate learners expectations and the learning settings was one of the main challenges of this project.
  • Reiterating the design
    Reiteration to revise the design goals was one of the many exercises our team followed to ensure that we are properly addressing the user needs and requirements. It helped us in rethinking some of the features of our application.
Want to know more about my work? Let's connect.
shariwa.malankar@gmail.com
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Made with love, coffee and magic
Thank you for reading
Let's get in touch
shariwa.malankar@gmail.com
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