Developing Educational Apps: A Comprehensive Guide
Written on
How to Develop an App for the Education Sector
A Narrative on Creating an App for Parents and Teachers
Having spent years in the e-Commerce field, I have had the chance to work on numerous digital products, primarily websites, with some apps included.
This article focuses on one particular app—a detailed account of my journey in designing an EdTech application aimed at the educational sector.
Overview
Our team adopted a 'User-Centered' approach, which was a logical choice, implemented from the very beginning through engaging stakeholders throughout the product development phase. The key stakeholders included:
- Internal | The client
- External | Teachers and Parents
This strategy helped us identify user needs, such as desired features from each stakeholder. For external stakeholders, we further refined product requirements using user stories, informed by research and personas.
I led a six-member team that engaged with each stakeholder to develop a user-defined “Requirements List.” The gathered results were validated against market demands concerning design and functionality.
Product Direction
Although the client had a strong brand presence, the market had become stagnant (particularly in online educational resources). This prompted the client to pursue something innovative—a brand extension that would offer new dimensions for their customers (parents and teachers) as well as consumers (students).
The options were twofold:
- Revamp the existing eCommerce platform, or
- Create a new complementary digital product.
The client concluded that enhancing the UX or UI of the current platform would not resolve the obligation of parents to purchase schoolbooks in Ireland, leading to the choice of developing a new digital product.
Additionally, option two opened avenues for future revenue streams and heightened engagement levels, thereby adding value for both customers and consumers.
A deeper investigation indicated three potential directions for the new product:
- Exchange platform — A venue for parents, teachers, and students to trade books and other items.
- Learning portal — A site for students to access educational materials (eBooks and traditional books).
- Social platform — A space for parents, teachers, and students to share crucial information.
Option #1 was dismissed due to:
- Risks of cannibalizing the existing website.
- Complicated or unattractive revenue models.
Option #2 was ruled out because of:
- Dependence on third-party services.
- Uncertainties in delivering a minimum viable product within the timeline.
- Revenue-sharing complexities.
Through this elimination process, we determined that the social communication platform (Option #3) was the most feasible given project constraints and the factors mentioned.
In summary, the selected direction hinted at a prospective return on investment through a new revenue stream.
> “Product management is a difficult, burnout-inducing profession. We do it because we love the idea of it more than actually doing it. I’ve hit the point in every product job I’ve ever had where I tell myself, ‘this is the last product job I’ll ever have.’ Still, I keep doing product work, hoping that the next job I have will be the one that fulfills my expectations.” — David Schlossberg, product director at CrowdTap
Brainstorming
Using Trello as a facilitator, we captured and shared ideas across all stakeholders. The brand name, preliminary logo design, color schemes, functionalities, and layouts evolved during this phase while adhering to stakeholder preferences.
Simultaneously, coding tasks related to back-end hosting and front-end development were refined.
Once a clear direction was established, we moved on to design processes and Agile Project Management (ATPM) methodologies.
Research Design
After defining the direction, we initiated market research.
Target Audience
We adopted a two-pronged approach:
a) Intrinsic Audience — The Client
The client's deep knowledge of eCommerce and the target market proved invaluable during the project's scope and objectives. However, as the project advanced, their availability and engagement decreased somewhat. Regular updates were communicated through me as the project manager, but attendance from the broader team was lacking.
Lesson learned
A crucial lesson became evident regarding project timing. The client had faced a challenging situation the previous year, which threatened their viability. During the app development, they were also in a rebuilding phase to regain brand trust. This effort led to a notable increase in sales (YoY) by 40% over 12 months, and 100% over the last three years.
Furthermore, peak demand in the online school book market occurs at the end of July and remains steady throughout August, coinciding with the latter stages of this project. This timing affected client availability. Nevertheless, given the brand's resurgence among the target audience, a positive future lies ahead for Tchalk.ie.
In hindsight, managing stakeholder expectations, ownership, and seasonal planning was overlooked. This was a mistake, but we adapted.
b) Extrinsic Audience — The Market
Our market research strategy yielded a wealth of data, validated by the level of interest from the target market. From the beginning, it was clear that the value proposition offered by Tchalk.ie was in demand, addressing user needs.
However, during the user-testing phase, the opposite occurred: client engagement increased while audience participation diminished, underscoring the adverse impact of timing. Evidence suggested that August is not an ideal time to interact with parents and teachers.
Market Research
Once the research design was finalized, we began conducting market research to evaluate product viability and engage more deeply with potential users.
Utilizing Google Forms, I developed a questionnaire that facilitated data collection, distinguishing between teachers and parents with targeted questions for each group.
I leveraged Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, along with the team’s personal networks, to distribute the questionnaire. Hashtags like @Educatetogether, @Schooldays_ie, @HerFamilydotie, and @MummyPages were utilized to reach the relevant audience.
Using 'Bitly,' I monitored the number of click-throughs to gauge engagement (percentage/number of responses), which proved to be quite favorable, approximately 20% response rate. Continuous engagement with the same audience further refined the aforementioned “Requirements List.”
Here’s an example of the questionnaire.
Persona and User Stories
A “User Persona” serves as a fictional representation of a user group interacting with your website. Once formulated, User Personas can be invaluable for designers and developers as they assist in identifying gaps, defining site functionality, and uncovering potential opportunities. (Function1.com)
Here are two personas from our project:
#### Carol (26)
Carol Young is a 26-year-old primary school teacher in Dublin. She is reasonably tech-savvy and maintains accounts on most popular social networks. Carol uses her daily commute on public transport to stay updated on news and social media via her smartphone.
Carol currently communicates with her students' parents through notes sent home, messages in homework journals, and conversations at the school gate. She would find it useful to manage these communications in one centralized app on her smartphone, keeping them separate from her personal messages. She also wishes to outline specific office hours for parents to reach her.
Carol believes a more reliable communication system among the school community would streamline her work and strengthen community ties.
Scenario: On her commute home from work, Carol checks her social media notifications but opts instead to check the Tchalk.ie app. She discovers a message from a parent reporting head lice in their child. Quickly, she drafts and sends an alert to other parents in her class, advising them on how to handle the situation. She includes the principal in this message for broader awareness.
#### Samuel (32)
Samuel Akintola is a dedicated father of two girls, Joy (5) and Idowu (7), with a demanding international spice import-export business. Both daughters attend the same school. Following the tragic loss of their mother in a car accident two years ago, Samuel is committed to providing for his daughters and ensuring they lack nothing. He drops them off at school each morning before dedicating at least 10 hours daily to his business. Samuel is adept at using mobile applications in his daily life, stemming from his background where mobile internet access was prevalent.
Samuel’s sister, Adele, picks up the children daily after school and supervises their homework, especially Idowu’s, as she has more assignments.
He likes to stay informed about school news and developments concerning his daughters. Currently, he receives updates through paper notes and text messages from the school administration and parents' association. Samuel is invested in his daughters’ education and strives to remain as informed as possible given his limited time.
Scenario: After finishing a call with a supplier in Lagos, Samuel checks the app to see upcoming school events. He notices a field trip scheduled for his daughters’ class and promptly calls Adele to inform her that she won’t need to pick up Joy until later than usual. He then checks the forums to see what other parents are discussing regarding the trip.
In total, six personas were developed to understand user stories and define the app's features and functions, alongside market research. This exercise is essential to uncover hidden functionalities that a digital product may require.
Research Conducted
A comprehensive binary research approach was employed, tailored for each audience, leading to three data strands:
The Client — Qualitative Research A
Unstructured engagement with the client facilitated a process of elimination through various brainstorming activities. Once this was completed, the primary objective became clearer.
The Audience / Market — Qualitative Research B
As mentioned, each team member selected a sample audience, consisting of either a parent or a teacher, to conduct in-depth interviews.
The Audience / Market — Quantitative Research A1
Finally, a random audience was selected via email invitations and social media outreach.
I was mindful that a biased approach could jeopardize the research integrity. Therefore, I guided the team to strategically design a triangulation method to optimize results.
This blended data acquisition minimized bias risks and enhanced validity.
The data collected was satisfactory and accurately represented the needs and expectations of all stakeholders. For transparency, results were documented and shared via Google Forms.
Planning And Project Execution
Guided by user-defined requirements derived from primary research—the questionnaire and in-depth interviews—the project planning process was established:
- Brainstorming, Market Research, and Initial Design
- Development of a Product Backlog — Key functions were extracted from user stories, market research, and initial designs.
- Iteration identification and planning — Tasks identified from the backlog evolved into sprints. We conducted six sprints over 12 weeks, each lasting two weeks.
- Daily agenda-led stand-ups — Held at noon daily, focusing on iteration tasks. We utilized Google Hangouts for remote meetings and shared documents and updates via Google Chat and Drive.
- Cross-functional team collaboration — Stream collaboration was encouraged, facilitated, and acted upon as needed to navigate challenges and meet milestones.
- Continuous improvement and risk analysis — These were recorded during sprint retrospectives to ensure early identification of risks for swift resolution.
- Pivots were undertaken — Early risk identification led to several pivots to safeguard critical milestones while adhering to the project timeline.
- Stakeholder engagement and expectation management — Early and robust engagement with primary stakeholders guided the project direction, with post-iteration updates provided throughout.
- Internal (Client) and external (Audience) User-testing — Journey testing engaged stakeholders to further refine the product.
Reflecting on this, the planning process was solid, but execution posed challenges in delivering the final product—Tchalk.ie. Nonetheless, planning from the outset proved crucial.
Design
The design brief aimed to create a web application appealing to families with a clear UI and simple navigation features.
Design Rationale
The design rationale drew inspiration from various emerging contemporary applications while considering factors related to the client’s brand:
- Existing brand fatigue
- Brand identity
- Brand trust association
- Brand diversity
- Brand loyalty
- Brand evolution
These considerations were made with customer loyalty in mind, aiming to influence retention.
Historically, the industry has maintained a unique customer-consumer disconnect, where decision-makers (schools/teachers) influenced by competitors (publishers) overlooked customer (parents) choices and disregarded consumer (students) needs.
Tchalk.ie aimed to redefine market boundaries and engage all stakeholders with fresh aesthetics for multi-level appeal.
Consequently, the product's look and feel introduced a new dimension, supported by its functionality. Comparisons with other market apps led to a distinct contrast with the client's previous brand palette, while still aligning with the educational theme of the new brand extension—Tchalk.ie—infusing a contemporary vibe into the client's identity.
To achieve the desired outcomes, team designers crafted wireframes followed by high-resolution layouts.
Wireframe — Parent
Wireframe — Teacher
Wireframe Mock-up
Look And Feel
The app's aesthetic was shaped by researching existing market applications—class messengers, calendars, and family apps.
From this research, we narrowed down designs by conceptualizing and documenting design solutions in InVision:
Design Features
The chosen colors considered the family audience appeal. The designer employed a playful palette of bright yellows, aquas, and greens.
The design centered around an illustration of a paper airplane symbolizing communication.
- Logo — The logo was hand-drawn and digitized, inspired by education, writing, blackboards, notes, homework, and message sharing.
- Color palette — The playful palette of bright yellows, aquas, and greens was selected to appeal to families. The design revolves around an illustration of a paper airplane conveying messages.
- Proxima Nova — This modern font, characterized by geometric proportions, has gained popularity in recent years and is utilized across thousands of websites globally.
- Foxhole — This new web font was used selectively to maintain the script feel of the logo in specific areas, such as the child's name and cross-heads in the FAQs. Notable sites using Proxima Nova include Spotify, Twitter Music, and Instagram's desktop version.
Brighter colors were employed for notices and reminders.
- Icons — The icons were uniquely designed for the app, featuring a quirky and fun style with rounded corners to promote a friendly and open theme.
- Buttons — The design adopted a light-hearted approach, framing buttons to resemble speech bubbles.
Application Functionality
At the time, most schools, teachers, and parents lacked a coherent system for distributing updates, homework requirements, resources, and invitations.
Research indicated this communication often occurred in an ad-hoc manner via printed handouts, individual texts, emails, phone calls, meetings, and social media.
The app aimed to consolidate all these functions, addressing calendar considerations and ensuring clear two-way communication.
The core functionality of the app was to resolve these issues, allowing teachers and parents (and students, where applicable) to engage with all school communications in one centralized location—a single source of truth.
Another challenge the app sought to address was the burden on parents/guardians overwhelmed with printed notices delivered via their children.
The lost, misplaced, or delayed notices led to complications.
Moreover, reducing paper usage aligned with schools' goals to achieve Green Flag status.
Security will be a fundamental functionality of any product related to children, necessitating encryption and secure access for user data.
Teacher Registration
The app's initial screen allows teachers to create their class roster, adding students and parents by invitation.
Options for admin and volunteer roles were also included.
Invitations were sent via email to reinforce a sense of security and trust through a curated gate-keeping component.
Security was identified as a critical feature during research.
Parent Registration (via invite)
This function completes the registration process, allowing parents or guardians to validate their children by name.
Group Creation
This feature provides an alternative to existing social media groups, such as Facebook or WhatsApp, enabling groups to be created using class codes.
For instance:
- Teachers/Admin/Volunteers group
- Parents group
Calendar
Shared information is stored, shared, and accessible on-demand within the app. This was a clear requirement throughout the research, particularly for correspondence, homework, and special events/activities.
Consequently, the Interactive Calendar Module was identified as the primary feature of the app.
In the calendar, users can easily access homework, scheduling, notes, notices, reminders, general messages, and messaging functions.
The calendar also includes standard search and browsing functionalities common in many applications.
Message
This module serves as a single source of truth for all communications, eliminating the need to switch between the school website, printed notices, Facebook, and WhatsApp. Alerts include:
- Alerts
- General Messages
- Notices
- Notifications
- Reminders
- Homework
- Actions
Forum & Resources
Here, all participants can exchange ideas and provide feedback outside traditional teacher-parent channels.
Members can also create and distribute essential learning resources, organize social events, birthday celebrations, and other extracurricular activities.
Functionality Conclusion
From a functionality perspective, the app streamlined communications into a flexible, centralized platform.
It also empowered users to take easy control over and organize the myriad communications occurring between all parties in the educational environment.
Everyone’s needs were met—all in one place.
Additional Information
The client proved to be complex but valuable for several reasons:
1 — Acquisition Approach: Upon project initiation, our team learned about the e-commerce industry's commercial realities when an established brand sought to acquire our client. Although the deal fell through, the experience taught us two key lessons:
- Entrepreneur — Homegrown brands do attract interest.
- Confidence — The courage to decline a poor deal.
Although this was a distraction, the exposure provided a unique learning experience. I recommend choosing the right client fit, or at least an interesting client from whom you can learn.
2 — Seasonal Demand
As previously mentioned, the client embarked on a transformative journey following challenges with a payment gateway, leading to a cautious re-establishment phase. Their entrepreneurial spirit resulted in a surge in sales.
I recommend selecting a client in the right sector with a suitable team to capitalize on market opportunities. It simplifies payment processes.
3 — Availability, Timing, Trust & Agility
As a result of points 1 and 2, the client's availability became a challenge. This highlighted the significance of timing and agility, which soon became apparent.
Get to know your client’s business intimately, or at least ask the right questions.
4 — Innovation
The potential implications of the brand innovation that Tchalk.ie introduced could significantly affect the school book market in the near future.
The team remains optimistic that this addition will profoundly influence consumer behavior due to the value-added aspects of brand fusion and complementary functionality.
Always pursue exciting projects with potential impact; even if they don’t succeed, the journey is worthwhile.
Final Thoughts and Lessons
In hindsight, it is fair to conclude that the project achieved its primary objectives. However, initial goals shifted somewhat to mitigate risks associated with UX design milestones within the timeline.
Lesson #1 — Understand your objectives from the beginning.
It became clear that completing the back-end in full within 12 weeks was overly ambitious. This constraint necessitated a pivot toward front-end development to deliver a more valuable MVP—development-ready.
Lesson #2 — Don't hesitate to pivot.
We delivered a highly developed user interface, providing the client with an investor-ready showcase product, which was seen as a strength.
Back-end testing ensured that integration with the front-end would be feasible going forward. Consequently, a back-end database was established, along with CMS testing.
Lesson #3 — Test, test, and test again.
The most significant weakness was the extended periods of client absence. This led to initial frustration within the team, but over time, the team gained confidence, leading from the front, and acknowledging that clear objectives had been agreed upon from the start, allowing us to progress undeterred.
Lesson #4 — Secure commitment from your client to participate.
Feedback from both the client and audience was overwhelmingly positive. The team recorded a video featuring client representatives, Andy and Paul, participating in user testing.
Lesson #5 — Client feedback is essential.
Similarly, we created a Google form to gather audience feedback via a questionnaire. Feedback was sought from the same participants engaged during the market research phase, confirming the successful achievement of project objectives.
Lesson #6 — User/audience feedback is paramount.
As expected, the project unveiled a variety of strengths and weaknesses. A robust team ethos, combined with a clear mission, vision, and values, enabled team members to successfully navigate challenges as they arose.
Ultimately, a lack of budget has temporarily shelved the project.
For further insights, I recommend reading the article below by Dr. Mehmet Yildiz.
High Performing Technical Teams
In Digital Transformation Programs of Large Business Organizations
References
- Productplan.com. (2020). How to Manage Stakeholder Expectations for Your Product. [online] Available at: https://www.productplan.com [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
- ProductGeeks. (2020). What People Don’t Tell You About Product Management — ProductGeeks. [online] Available at: https://productgeeks.com [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
- Function1.com (2015). User-Centered Design: User Personas vs. User Stories. [online] Available at: https://www.function1.com/ [Accessed 4 Feb. 2020].
