Reimagine Education in Nanyang Technological University

THE VISION
ENABLE LEARNING ANYWHERE, ANYTIME
The vision, as we articulate it today, here in Nanyang Technological University is to be technologically-enabled ready(TEL) by 2020.

50%

courses will undergo digital transformation

By:

2020

REINVENT TIME
SPENT IN CLASSROOM
All classroom learning in future will be more dialogue driven. One that facilitate the asking of difficult questions and to challenge the cognitive arguments raised by learners.
KEY QUESTION
"
By 2020, can students be independent learners?

"
PROBLEM
STUDENTS LACK FORMATIVE FEEDBACK
Most professors prioritize research paper over consultations with students after classroom hours.
TODAY SOLUTION
PEER TUTORING PROGRAMS
Peer tutoring programs(PTP) were set up across the different faculties to bridge that gap.
THE CHALLENGE
SIMPLIFY CURRENT PTP BOOKING PROCESS
In order for a first-time user to book a peer-tutoring session, the student has to perform 17 actions on their website. By using Hotjar, we have found out that 16 out of 40 users dropped out while attempting the on-boarding process. A time-study was also conducted, and it took an average user 7.83minutes to complete the process.

Onward increase in demand every semester

35%

High drop out rate

40%

MY ROLE
I led the efforts to redesign the service and address customer pain points related to the discovery and booking process between September 2016 to March 2018 and collaborated with two other UX designers and an external agency we've hired to develop the mobile application.
THE APPROACH
EXPLORE THE DEPTHS AND SETTLE FOR ONE
At the outset of the project, we didn't have a clear mission or specific goals to meet when tackling the project . This gave us the autonomy to diverge and understand the problem deeply and explore different design opportunity to solving them.
READ FULL UX PROCESS
GET-GO

EARLY INSIGHTS FROM THE FIELD

We tested existing PTP booking services with 8 participants. Our goals were to also understand the current process of the PTP, the challenges tutors, tutees, and tutor manager faced and the workarounds they employed.
FLAWED SYSTEM CREATES OPPORTUNITY FOR FRAUD

Peer tutoring services in NTU are fully-funded. Students do not have to pay for them. Dishonest tutors were caught colluding with their friends to make bookings with them just so they can earn extra allowance.

PEER TUTORS ARE THE CORNERSTONE

Students end up specifying names of tutors they want to have sessions with before booking due to the inconsistency of tutors with qualities they were looking for.

INEFFICIENT ROSTER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Tutor manager spends an average of two hours daily maintaining excel sheets and the roster management system.

DIRECT 2ND YEAR ADMISSION STUDENTS LACKED FOUNDATION

Professors expect them to have already understand the foundation and moved on to teaching the advance modules.

CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING TAKES THE SECOND SEAT

Memorise = good grades, Answering in your own words = penalised. Is this the model of learning and education?

SOLUTION

Can we make the booking process more pleasant?

Booking a session with a tutor has never been more straightforward. Getting help from a subject expert is just 4 steps with MENTOR booking app

Delay on-boarding process

Students can now explore MENTOR booking app without having to sign in with their credentials.

Context is key

Create relevancy when collecting data from customers. Gamify the process of collecting data is an example of an effective way.
SOLUTION

Can we test our assumptions before committing the dollars?

This tactic was perceived to be advantageous and the  riskiest. Instead of committing thousands of dollars on the mobile app development.
‍
Samantha was built within 3 days to test our assumption on the whether there’s a demand for a new booking app.
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Feature design and development were broken into parallel workstreams for the MENTOR Booking app and MENTOR Chat Bot. I led the content inventory, architecture for the chat robot.

Introducing Samantha, our helpful chat robot.

Book a 1hr consultation with our subject experts on subjects you require help via our chat robot. Samantha is deployed on Messenger and telegram.
TEST ON MESSENGER
SOLUTION

Introducing Roster Management System

Tutor manager can now create and manage schedules of tutor in a flash and oversee shift swaps.

Peer tutors to lock down their availability

Gone were the days where popular tutors clocks in more hours of tutoring sessions upon tutees' request, leaving out the unpopular ones. Every tutor will be given equal opportunity to have sessions with tutees in a week set by the tutor manager.

Tutor managers have the final say

All the tutor manager have to do is to make the final confirmation and publish the roster. Notification will be sent to peer tutors and the availability of peer tutors would be reflected on the front-end of MENTORs' mobile app.

Find this interesting? Read full documentation of my retrospective on medium blog.

READ FULL UX PROCESS NASA CASE STUDY