Humanizing the school search process to guide parents as they make one of their most critical decisions
Process
Problem Statement:
Parents choosing a new school for their child need access to both comprehensive hard data and insight into a school’s culture in order to confidently navigate this stressful process.
Research showed that parents find the school search process stressful, time-consuming and cold. School information is fractured across many platforms, which makes it difficult to find schools that meet a child's needs or a parent's expectations.
![a person with red nails holding a phone that reads: "My list of [impossible] tasks: Find a school that makes me happy, find a school that makes my child happy, call every school to schedule a tour, go to every open house. Stressed yet? I give up."](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6469629795b9c94676f8cb39/647a32bf4e69af6a8a106c7b_stressed%20yet.png)
User testing illuminated that my initial assumptions about the problem space and my users were wrong.
I assumed that parents wanted to save time and stress in the school search process by having immediate access to school data and contact information. When I designed prototypes to test this hypothesis, users reported that this journey flow created more of the overwhelm and stress that I was trying to combat.
I tore down the designs I created, and started over.
I received frequent feedback from peers and a project manager throughout the sprint. The final deliverable for this sprint was a presentation and high-fidelity prototype, which is previewed to the right.
Parents are overwhelmed and frustrated by the school choice process. My goal was to clarify which information communicates to a parent whether or not a school will meet their child’s needs.
Affinity and empathy mapping from 6 user interviews highlighted three principle themes:
Overall, I understood that choosing a school for their children is one of the most stressful decisions a parent makes - and also one of the most important.
To move forward, I needed to get to know the parents themselves...
Parents represent a multitude of cultural, linguistic, economic and academic backgrounds - and their priorities for their children are just as varied.
Marlene, for example, is a single, working mother, whose first language is not English. A solution must account for parents like Marlene, who have specific constraints and needs.
While parents are seeking schools that meet their children’s needs, they are also looking for a school that offers an experience they resonate with. A theme from parents that changed the paradigm of my research:
“I felt relief when I found a school that I would have wanted to attend.”
Analysis of other school search platforms revealed what parents were missing:
1. Comprehensive information in one place &
2. A peek into the soul of a school.
Current school search platforms include vital school data, but lack elements that humanize schools - like pictures, videos, and student and parent reviews.
No other audited sites include language toggles for parents who speak a primary language other than English. Other platforms lack functionality, color and playfulness that make the search process enjoyable for parents.
I thought parents wanted school offerings front and center - I was wrong.
Early navigation testing highlighted this insight: Using the low-fidelity prototypes I created, I prompted users to find a school that offered a robust gymnastics program.
Both users mentioned that instead of contacting a school or seeing sports data, they wanted to see news articles, competition videos, and coach bios that could give them real insight into the culture of a program - beyond just knowing that one exists.
These tests revealed that humanizing a school’s offerings is more important than listing them outright.
Parent-centered information architecture presented with playful UI creates a user experience that satisfies a parent’s head and heart.
My solution, Smart Search, is a fully responsive school information playground. High-fidelity prototypes employ a color scheme that invokes a sense of nostalgia and play: text is the color of hot blacktop, Calls to Action are illuminated with school bus yellow, and school accents float in a background the color of a pencil eraser.
The final design is approachable, modern, bilingual and accessible - and matches parents’ mental models while also giving glimpses into a day in the life of each school. A parent doesn’t have to spend hours at an open house to get a sense of how a school might feel.
While all relevant information is nested in the school details, the feeling is what comes first.
Testing proved my assumptions wrong - and this valuable insight led to a parent-focused solution to the problem.
Early navigation testing revealed that my mental maps of information hierarchy in the school search process did not align with the mental maps of my users.
Parents represent a diverse group of people, and Smart Search must cater to those needs in order for the product to be usable and accessible.
Developing this project further would require additional research and testing to understand what school data is available and how to keep the user experience aligned with business and school goals.
To provide parents with the experience of getting to know a school, qualitative school information must be available - which will require school and parent buy-in and incentivization. One competitor, Niche, licenses school data. This is an interesting model that could be valuable for Smart Search to explore.
The findings of this case study provide a solid foundation for Smart Search, a product which is accessible, human-centered, and delightful - and which offers the resources for parents to choose a school where their children will thrive and grow. Is there anything more important?
