Bubugo: Taking Steps in Education
Industry
Education
Duration
3 months
Roles
Research
Branding
UI/UX Design
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Bubugo Mobile App. A convenient way to connect parents with tutors.
Bubugo is an independent design project for an app that connects parents in Taiwan with reliable tutors for their children. From the app, parents can manage payment, scheduling, and messaging with multiple tutors.
The Chinese name is 步補Go, 步 meaning step (bù), and 補 meaning tutor (bù)—a play on words about taking steps in education.
First Steps
Identifying Challenges and Sympathizing with Users
The Problem
Parents in Taiwan don't have a streamlined way of finding tutors. They can go on Facebook groups and try strangers, they can ask by word of mouth which is hard for specific subjects, or they can search on data bases which in Taiwan are often not user-friendly and very overwhelming.
Popular pages like Tealit are filled with ads and list thousands of tutors with no filter options, only a key word search.
Facebook groups don’t have a way of verifying the quality of tutors. There is also no guaranteed response, and no way to filter candidates.
Background Research told us parents are most afraid of ending up with random, unqualified teachers that often appear in online searches and existing apps. They also did not want to deal with complicated pre-screening, dead accounts on databases, and about good teachers already being taken.
The Goal
Create a platform that gives parents ease when choosing tutors. Make sure that the tutors they see are qualified, that there is ease of communication across languages, and that setup is intuitive and simple.
Preliminary Survey Findings
Parents want
professionalism
clear communication about times, prices, and student expectations
“Having fun while doing hard things”
good relationship with the child
“If my kid doesn’t want to go to his lesson, that’s a battle I don’t want to have to fight.”
Tutors want
a rewarding feeling, making a difference, seeing progress
students that are engaged and asking questions
“sense of teamwork”
“communication with the students and parents is respectful and clear”
“fair, reliable pay” that leads toward long term tutoring
Design Implementation Goals
Clear scheduling
Transparent communication features
Tutor bios that give parents and children a clear idea of the approach and expectations
Clear pricing
A trial lesson to make sure that it can be a good long-term partnership
Primary User Persona
User Journey Map
Preliminary Designs
Big Picture Storyboard
This storyboard shows the son of the user persona facing problems in education and using the app with the guidance of his mother to get back on track at school.
Brainstorming Solutions
This brainstorming session centered around finding ways to assure parents that material was being learned by the student so that parents in situations such as the user persona’s could make sure their children were reaching the goal of improving in class.
User Flow Chart
After numerous iterations of sitemaps and paper protypes, a clean wireframe was made in Figma which was turned into a low fidelity prototype and used for testing.
Wireframe
Testing
Methodology
Individuals with experience hiring tutors, tutoring, and receiving tutoring were asked to:
Complete various tasks and voice their thoughts aloud in the presence of an interviewer.
Complete a System Usability Scale.
Condensed Results
Most issues arose around the calendar that came up when trying to book a tutor. This was classified as a P0 problem because some individuals were not able to complete the primary task of booking a tutor because of confusion about the calendar.
This was the first priority in the next iteration.
Design Impact
Users did not know which day of the week corresponded to which calendar day
so a full calendar was implemented.
It was unclear to some users what the rectangles signified
so they were replaced with boxes , clearly labelled with the times
High Fidelity Prototype
Mockups
Mockups and and high fidelity prototype were made in Figma, addressing the issues that arose from the first round of testing. The prototype focuses on the main user flow of entering information about a child, finding a tutor, and scheduling a first lesson
Another round of usability testing took place, revealing some issues in formatting and ease of function which were addressed in the next version of the mockup.
Design System Sample
Impact and Next Steps
Original Goals Realized
A trial lesson to make sure that it can be a good long-term partnership
Transparent communication features
Auto translate allows for translation between parents and tutors who speak different language, which user testing found to be successful.
Tutor bios that give parents and children a clear idea of the approach and expectations
Clear pricing
Clear scheduling
Several users (parents specifically) expressed enthusiasm at the idea of a video introduction to give an idea of the feel of the tutor before meeting.
What I Learned
UX research skills - how to synthesize multiple layers of research findings
Iterative design - the importance of early testing, and the willingness to rethink aspects later in the design process if they prove to not be working
Accessible Design - how to constantly account for accessibility, especially keeping contrast in mind while using a colorful and fun color palette
Design system thinking - the value of consistent components to keep the design process efficient
Impact
User ability increased between iterations with System Usability Scores increasing
75% → 90%
Filtering by location, price, language, and ability to meet in person now available (currently not offered by competitors)
All design goals were achieved
Next Steps
in a fully developed app the calendar section would need to be reformatted to reduce clutter
the auto translate feature would need to allow editing in both the original and auto translated sections
the full implications of AI matching in Smart Recommendations would need to be presented in a clear and thoughtful way