UX Case Study: ACT Test Prep Mobile App

The Brief

Background & Research

Context

Colleges & universities in the United States require students to submit their SAT or ACT test scores when applying for school. There are various ways to study for the test: some students can manage studying on their own, while others seek help from personal tutors or formal classes. Private classes and tutoring sessions can have a hefty price tag (sometimes as high as $500/session), so students with more financial resources have a leg up on those that do not, creating an education access divide within a competitive university application process.

Competitive Research

Mobile apps and online platforms are popular, highly accessible distribution channels that provide opportunities for high school students to learn new skills and excel in their classes. Some popular household names:

Duolingo - a popular app for all ages that teaches new languages to users in small, digestible, and gamified lessons. Branding & tone sway younger, featuring more playful messages & an interface that's easy to grasp.
Quizlet - one of the most widely used online, free platforms that students can share and create study tools for classes & tests. They also have an app that syncs with students online accounts
Khan Academy - a massive online education marketplace providing content for all types of classes & subject areas. They're an official partner of the SAT.

Opportunity Area

Despite the wide availability of online learning experiences that aid in AP courses, high school classes, and language acquisition, there are no free standalone apps that provide a guided tutoring experience for the ACT exam.

The Project

The Client

Glif is a ACT test-prep company that helps students everywhere access affordable test-prep solutions. They believe that by teaching foundational concepts and critical thinking skillsets in a way that's easy to understand and is engaging, they can train students to be better equipped for post-secondary educations after high school.

Main Objective

Build a free, test-prep app for Glif that mimics the role of a tutor and helps students prepare for the ACT exam. The product should be useful (to imitate a tutor), intuitive (to avoid drop-off or app cancellations), and gamified to promote user engagement (and promote longevity of the app).

Research

Exploratory Research

I worked with an educator at VaultPrep (a premium brick & mortar test prep company in Los Angeles) to get a high-level understanding of tutoring methodologies and ideologies so I could emulate these ideas in the app.

I also spoke to 5 high school students that studied for the SAT or ACT to understand their needs and pain points while studying. Here are a few of the takeaways:

2 students (one that studied on her own and another that took classes) were stressed while studying
2 students that studied on their own mentioned that balancing and organizing & tracking their study assignments was a bit difficult

Personas

I created (3) provisional personas to guide my design. Here's one of those personas.

App Mental Models + Requirements

These are a few gamified mobile learning applications - some important features

Multiple Choice Formats - similar to a standardized ACT test prep, we should include multiple choice answers
Check Button - we want students to have the opportunity to check their answer
Incorrect and correct feedback messages - we need to provide...

Building the Experience

REQUIREMENTS & FLOW

Requirements

Home screen
Dashboard screen - manage the 4 subject areas of the ACT test prep.
Testing interface - simple, minimized design to promote focus and learning within the app
1. Show progress within the test
2. Enable users to exit the program if they'd like
3. Ability to "check" if an answer is correct or incorrect
4. Incorrect and correct feedback messages
A gamification element - how do users know when they are doing well?

WIREFRAMES

When I first joined the team, several screens had already been built out by a developer. Below are the screenshots. Some design improvements I identified at the start:

The questions ans answers should have a consistent format across screens - going up to down or side to side.
The main action (NEXT) was not easily discoverable - the button did not stand out from a coloring perspective nor from a size perspective
There were no feedback messages taken into account.