Suggesting New Features based on research to for an Edtech startup to find its niche.

Suggesting New Features based on research to for an Edtech startup to find its niche.

In this project, I was the solo designer who worked on it from start to finish. I worked on its UX, its UI and its animations. I did collaborate with other designers from time to time to fast pace the work, leading the team and making the vision come to reality. I worked on motion design as well. There were iterations on iterations, making the product better with each one.

Interaction Design

Content

User Flows and Task Flows

Content

Information Architecture

Content

Visual Design

Content

Motion Design

Content

Type of Project

Type of Project

Interaction Design

Year

Year

2022-2024

Role

Role

Solo Designer

Brief

Brief

The project started with a simple requirement - the design for a product they are conceptualising for students of Grade X-XII from International Curriculum. I was given an excel sheet of data they had collected.

My Take

My Take

I performed the Information Architecture and the Task Flows to come up with a unique App for that purpose. I also proposed new features like Step Assist and mapped out how the other features would work in action, bringing words to visuals.

Synthesis of Data from Google Form Responses

Synthesis of Data from Google Form Responses

This happened in 2023 August. the founders had an idea to make a tool for unlimited math questions using AI for practising maths. By the time I had joined in November, They had circulated a google form to all students to validate this. I joined in and started tagging the data and collecting insights of student's opinions, needs and gaps.

Unlimited 'resources' already available

Resources here was mistaken for explanation videos, visuals and practise problems which seemed abundant

Pen & Paper Supremacy

Laptops not preferrable due to distractions, pen and paper still the best.

Free practise problems

Need the AI to be free as abundant problems are already available with quick google search

Real Life Application

Need of good tutors who can show real life application of maths - 'why to learn this'. Explanations can be done through 3D, VR, etc

Being Stuck

It's a major annoyance. Would be helpful to Connect with an expert or AI, who can help them to find solutions to hard questions or pinpoint mistakes

Stepwise Video Solutions with Reasoning

Practise problems could only be helpful if there is stepwise solutions with rationale - why this step or formula

Tailor Made

Can take advantage of AI to customise problems for user's pace, style of learning and understanding of concept.

Tips & Tricks

Need for someone to show tips and tricks, vedic maths and easier ways of solving a problem

Reasons for Positive Outlook on Maths

No Memorisation

No Memorisation

Logic is Fun!

Logic is Fun!

Accomplishment when answer is right

Accomplishment when answer is right

My Suggestions for the Product

Based on insights, I crafted suggestions for the product to the founder. He was quite receptive and understood what is to be done, and helped ideate to solve the problem in various ways.

Based on insights, I crafted suggestions for the product to the founder. He was quite receptive and understood what is to be done, and helped ideate to solve the problem in various ways.

Community Feature for Doubts

Rather than unlimited questions, the demand is for explanations, doubts and help. A community feature like codecademy where people answer doubts while learning and practising a programming language would be of great value.

A way to explain real life application

The problems could be tailor made in such a manner that it would show them ways that they could actually use it in real life.

Upon brainstorming, he came up with an idea for quizzes based off real life hobbies to help pique interest and apply concepts to their interests.

Move away from question generation

CBSE and ICSE both demanded better explanation, tutors for concepts, but did not want practise questions. However students from IB did not demand explanation either. This could be due to better faculties in class.


However, this has intense market competition and thus, the founder decided to shift the target audience for practise questions to IB Curriculum.

He suggested that IB Curriculum does not have enough unlimited practise questions, and those books are very expensive.

Conducting Interviews for Community Feature

Conducting Interviews for Community Feature

Proposing a community feature, I asked for help to connect with students and make this happen to see if we could understand what kind of difficulties arise, and what could it bring out.

Insights from Interviews

Based on insights, I crafted suggestions for the product to the founder. He was quite receptive and understood what is to be done, and helped ideate to solve the problem in various ways.

Based on insights, I crafted suggestions for the product to the founder. He was quite receptive and understood what is to be done, and helped ideate to solve the problem in various ways.

Limited Scope to monetise with this Mental Model

Students already have college groups, tuitions and seniors to connect to in case of doubts. With Youtube and Chatgpt, it's just better. Would be hard to make students pay per use fee for something they expect for free.

Scope for Seniors Limited

It's unlikely to connect to seniors for study related doubts but more on guidance to achieve what they have done - universities, competitions and more. This could be done through LinkedIn as well. There is not much scope for connecting to a senior just for a chapter related doubt.

Could expect a change in mental model

However, this could also be different once monetisation comes in, the mental model could change and they could ask silly doubts as well.

Can't sell to Schools

Looking at the insights, the founder decided that the goal was to have something that they could sell to schools, rather than students directly.


A practise question generator would become a way for teachers to generate mock papers after they have taught a concept or subject in school, which could be used by students at home. I aligned with his vision.

2 Iterations

The design was done in 2 phases. During the first phase, it went from scratch to some visual screens. During the 2nd phase, the whole team had much more clarity into what needs to be built based on suggestions from various people. And by that time, I had also started evaluating the design and started to find what could be made better.


The gap between the 2 was almost 6 months.

Design PRD v1

Job to be Done: The user hires this tool to get his maths answers assessed, practise mock papers and improve his math scores at school.

This product should contain:

  • Image Analysis and OCR to read and understand a solved sum on paper.

  • An unlimited question generator to create curriculum based mock papers. 

  • Step wise answers to questions

  • Identifying progress in each strong and weak areas of the student. 

The next phase: 

  • Predicted Grades based on time taken to solve mock paper, no. of sums solved, correct and wrong answers, variations of the sum understood and not understood. 

  • Social Part: Community, Peer Help, Competitions and Games.

Information Architecture

This consumes the most time as organising features into categories and seeing what could be done how is a concern. I kept going back and forth from this and Task Flows, and had a lot of iterations and back and forth with the stakeholders.

Decisions taken and Rationale

Mock Paper: The practise tab could contain the topics as well as mock papers. A separate menu could be there for correcting your worksheet as a user will solve a worksheet on pen and paper and directly login to the webapp again, hence correct worksheet should be easily available. Then I decided to directly make the Mock Paper available.

All Chapters: In the old UI, All chapters was a menu. However, keeping it accessible from the menu bar was not required as the frequency someone would need to go to topics is not as high, and there is already an explore section inside the home page for 'recommended topics'. Thus, keeping topics inside practise makes sense as topics are already there in form of continue learning.

Insights Tab: Earlier, I had planned to put this in the profile section where your profile page could be like a dashboard. However, this needed to be more accessible on priority. The Insights tab should function like a report card / dashboard with actionable insights - pushing them in subjects they're not strong in. This does not fit in home page where we have continue learning and exploring other chapters. There could be a push for chapters in a different way on the home page. Best way to keep give it it's importance is to give it a separate tab.

Task Flows

To understand how a feature would work without looking at already existing examples, a combination of lo-fid prototypes, task flows and information architecture goes simultaneously.

Old Mock Paper Feature Task Flow

There was 2 problems with this task flow

  1. There was no way to evaluate a mock paper after closing the laptop. How will the computer know which mock paper I'm uploading my answers for if i refresh the tab?

  2. The task flow was too big, and this whole mock paper could be turned into a separate tab itself. Apart from that, separating evaluate and generate would be a better idea.

New UI Mock Paper Feature

Making a separate Menu to break the flow has helped cut out the confusions.

Taking them directly to the analysis of the answers once they upload it would be a good flow.

Evaluation of mock paper

Step Assist - Learning through Assessment

As a constraint was MCQ itself, I came up with an innovative method called "Step Assist". With this method, user is learning while doing the quiz. They solve it step by step, instead of directly selecting the answer. Thinking through how a feature would work with flows and then with UI iterations.

Giving feedback in the end would lead to various nuances like options given from the backend and more, and it was better to get immediate feedback than in the end. So I changed the feedback mechanism.


I worked on it further and made them get clues on steps. They get hints, XP and explanations as well. I detailed it out completely as to what would happen in the sequence. This answers important questions like
how will gamification work? How do we provide explanation to students?

Old vs New Learning Plan Flow

All changes highlighted in Dark Blue, that would change in the next flow.


Entry: Earlier, I decided that learning plan should go from home -> practise menu itself, however later I shifted it to a button. Later I shifted that to accessing it from the sidebar which will have the plan.


The contents inside the learning plan was yet to be thought of.

Practising Weak Subjects

Earlier, I had linked it to My Chapters page in which it would show it in terms of a table. Later, I decided to do it in such a way that it was more visually understood and actionabe within the insights tab, which also had graphs saying how well versed you are in a topic rather than a table.

Earlier, I had linked it to My Chapters page in which it would show it in terms of a table. Later, I decided to do it in such a way that it was more visually understood and actionabe within the insights tab, which also had graphs saying how well versed you are in a topic rather than a table.

Practising Chapter You Know

I wanted to try out a new interaction, different from the grid based ones. However it would fail due to a lot of reasons. This gives a feeling that there is a path of subjects, which was intended. However, the responsiveness is questioned. Hence, went for the grid layout itself.

I wanted to try out a new interaction, different from the grid based ones. However it would fail due to a lot of reasons. This gives a feeling that there is a path of subjects, which was intended. However, the responsiveness is questioned. Hence, went for the grid layout itself.

Community Feature

Post to community only if not satisfied with AI answers. However, this feature was not taken ahead.

Post to community only if not satisfied with AI answers. However, this feature was not taken ahead.

UI Iterations

Insights Screen

Home Page

Quiz - Correct Answer in Step Assist

Final Outcome

Landing Page

Home Page

Chapters Directory

Levels Inside Chapters

Learning Plan AI Generated

Generate Worksheet

Insights on Solved Worksheet

Explanation of correct answers

Global Insight Cards

QnA Page