Sahyai
Enabling teachers with tools that can make their lives easier
An app for teachers to plan and execute teaching efficiently.
This project was a part of our module and I was Mentored by Mr Vishwam Pathak who is a senior user experience designer at Accenture.
Project Brief
My professor challenged me to investigate the difficulties students in suburban schools in India face. I conducted secondary research and user interviews as a part of primary research. With the data I have collected, I designed an application to assist teachers in being more efficient. In this project, my role included conducting user research, developing the interface, and creating the visuals and wireframes for the application.
Problem Statement
Indian suburban schools, despite having advanced technologies like modern labs and smart classrooms, suffer from a shortage of qualified teachers, leading to high student-teacher ratios and overwhelming workloads. This results in stressed teachers who struggle to effectively meet the needs of all students.
Overview
Modern labs and smart classrooms are among the advanced technologies found in Indian suburban schools. Nevertheless, they frequently lack the funding necessary to employ a sufficient number of competent instructors, which results in circumstances where a single teacher is in charge of several classes with between 50 and 70 students.
Teachers are trained to meet the needs of students with special needs, including ADHD, but they frequently lack the time and energy to prepare for every class. Their capacity to work effectively and efficiently is hampered by the severe stress they experience. Their capacity to deliver a better quality of education could be considerably enhanced if there was a way to reduce the amount of work they had to do.
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Sahyai is a teachers assistant app that can help teachers to plan their classes and use tested and proven techniques for better efficiency.
Solution
Sahyai is a teacher's assistant app designed to help educators plan their classes using templates and pointers created by experts with various specialties. By streamlining the planning process, Sahyai aims to free up valuable time for teachers, allowing them to focus more on their students.
Meet Mrs. Paulin,
Mrs. Paulin is a program coordinator at a suburban school, where she manages multiple teachers and helps them address students' needs. As a junior teacher, she was passionate about supporting students with special needs, pursuing higher education to advance her skills. Now, she mentors junior teachers to equip them with these essential skills. However, she feels that students are still not receiving the necessary support and that teachers are struggling to work efficiently.
Key Features
Helping teachers plan their classes with expert suggestions
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When a teacher identifies a student with ADHD and is unsure how to plan the class to cater to their needs, they can utilize a pre-planned strategy created by our experts.
To-do lists aid in reminding them of the tasks still outstanding.
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Teachers and administrators can add tasks to a to-do list, which helps teachers stay organized by sending reminders and allowing them to manage their time effectively.
My design Process
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Secondary Research
There has been much improvement in education in India, but it is difficult to say whether the children are truly educated. In rural India, nearly three-quarters of third graders cannot solve a two-digit subtraction problem such as 46 minus 17. By grade five, half of them still cannot do so. To pinpoint where exactly the problem lies I did my research on five different areas (i.e. Education system, Training Agencies, Teachers, School Management, Parents and students). After observing the kids and teachers for a day I narrowed down my work to the teacher's side of the problem. My secondary research lead me to certain questions,
Primary Research
After doing the secondary research I was left with a lot of questions and to find answers I interviewed teachers, parents, teacher training agencies and school management. Most of the teachers i interviewed were very stressed and the management is actively conducting training programs for the teachers so that they can teach efficiently.
Personas.
With all the data I had, i split them into digestible bits by creating personas. This helps me to understand our user's goals, needs, experiences, and behaviours. Personas help me to get in their shoes and understand their perspective efficiently.
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Program Coordinator
Persona
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Empathy Mapping
Before figuring out the current user flow of the teachers I wanted to understand and get deeper insights about the users.
Existing User Journey
Based on the interactions i had with the teachers I divided the teachers into three different categories visceral, behavioural and reflective. Every teacher's preparation process can be broken down into these steps.
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UI Process
After the ideation stage, I used the card sorting process which helps me to create the Information Architecture. from there I created a couple of user flow to sketch out the Low fidelity wireframes. After the wireframes are created I did a few use cases and started with the high-fidelity screens.
Information Architecture
UI Screens
I wanted to create a minimal design for this product so that there would be less clutter and it wouldn't be cluttered with too much information. I also wanted to make sure the image and the text were easy on the eyes so that people would want to read my description.
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Low Fidelity Wireframes
Low fidelity designs allows for rapid iteration and validation of design concepts at an early stage of development
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Guidelines
Color
Poppins
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Roboto
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt UuVv Ww Xx Yy Zz 0123456789
UI Anatomy
This outlines the anatomy of the application's dashboard.
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Components
A components kit assists us in upholding consistency and fostering relatability and uniformity throughout the product.
High Fidelity
Dashboard
The dashboard displays the teacher's calendar, showing upcoming classes. It also includes a to-do list for tasks assigned by both the teachers and the admin.
Plan classes screen.
The dashboard functions like a note board. On the left, it displays all the teachers' notes, while on the right, it shows suggested pre-written plans. Teachers can use the notes section to plan their classes
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Manage classes page.
Teachers can see students from each class with their profiles, mark their attendance, and see their grades here.
Pop-up box.
There are multiple pop-ups in the app where teachers can enter data.
Key Learnings
This was my first UX project, and I was really lucky to have an amazing mentor. I learned a lot from working with different teachers, and it really showed me how important in-depth research is in this field.
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Observe more than what's needed - At the start, I tried to explore various options to find the answers but the longer I observed the more questions I got that I wasn’t aware of. Next time I might try to get more insight into the teacher’s daily life and find as many issues as possible.
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Be more explorative - After my first few days of research, i was stuck with just the student's side of the problem. Once I started thinking about the stakeholders, i got a lot of different insights. So next time instead of thinking about just one group I will work in different directions.
Thank You.
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