PLUS: Building a Dynamic, Personalized Tutoring Schedule
Role
Designer & Researcher
Team
Design Mentor: Bill Guo
PM: Shiv Gupta
Devs: Max Benson, Jose Deleon
Timeline
Feb - Jul 2024
What is PLUS?
PLUS (Personalized Learning Squared) is a CMU-based startup providing tutoring opportunities to communities across Pennsylvania.
Currently, PLUS has helped 2.5k+ students through 400+ tutors, and has conducted 83k+ total hours of tutoring.
MY ROLE
From user research to hi-fi prototyping, I transformed PLUS' Google spreadsheet-based tutoring schedule into a personalized native-app schedule.
Why Rework the Schedule?
As PLUS' operations grew, adding more and more schools and sessions to a spreadsheet became unsustainable.
plus spring 2024 schedule
There are 3 unique users of the schedule, and the current spreadsheet doesn't account for their differing needs.
regular tutors
Find their sessions
lead tutors
Take tutor attendance, find their sessions
administrators
Track tutor payroll, add/cancel sessions
Uncovering Tutor Needs
user interviews
While extensive research had been done with admin, there was still uncertainty in what tutors needed.
I conducted user interviews to identify regular/lead tutor JTBDs and pain points with the original schedule.
study Demographics
2 Lead Tutors / 8 Regular Tutors
50% Seasoned Tutors / 50% New Tutors
Findings
defining the problem space
How might we make the attendance process more convenient for lead tutors?
How might we provide tutors with an efficient way of locating their sessions?
How might we communicate session info more clearly to tutors?
How might we balance context & digestibility when presenting session details?
Ideation & Iteration
Lo-fi sketches
early designs
I experimented with borders, buttons, checkboxes, dropdown menus, and more.
The Design Solution
Tutor View: Joining Sessions
The new schedule streamlines tutor JTBDs through session filtering, real-time cancellation alerts, and optional tutor list cross-checking.
Old Schedule
New Schedule
Lead Tutor View: Marking Attendance
The new schedule provides lead tutors with an intuitive in-app way to track tutor attendance.
Old Schedule
New Schedule
Admin View: Payroll & Tutor Communication
The new schedule simplifies complex admin tasks originally done outside the schedule. Now, admin can easily export CSVs catered towards their needs and create/send alerts.
New: exporting payroll
New: creating session alerts
Design Solution: A Closer Look
removing irrelevant columns
When determining what columns to remove I asked myself: will this column's info differentiate sessions?
"View my sessions" Toggle
Rather than have tutors manually find their names in a huge schedule, I introduced a toggle that filters between the tutors' signed-up sessions vs all sessions.
cancellation alerts
Not only do alerts appear as a dismissible banner, but they're also "disabled" in the table entries to ensure session status is communicated clearly.
pagination: spacing out info
Since the schedule isn't separated by school anymore, I introduced a 10 entry pagination along with a time range filter to organize all sessions.
Wrapping Up: Handoff & Takeaways
impact
In August 2024, I shipped my design. A month later, the new schedule is live for all tutors and admins to use!
What i learned
Design lives within the context of development.
Shiv (PM) pointed out that some choices I made were unnecessarily complex. In the future, I'll make sure my designs take into account dev feasibility and resources.
Conflict is key to success.
The project's length/complexity meant there were many times I faced disagreement. I used to get uncomfortable and frustrated by criticism, but through this project I learned that conflict leads to new ideas, perspectives, and solutions.
