FIndtutor is an Edutech startup that is focused on helping higher institution students get better grades through peer tutoring.

DATE: March 2021

ROLE: Product Designer

Challenge

How might we help A level students in Nigeria get good grades because due to personal reasons and the country poor educational structure makes students get bad grades.

Research

Students of higher institutions in Nigeria have big dreams of graduating and getting high paying jobs to live a happy life. This dream is however, cut short when they are not able to graduate with good grades which shuts them out of good job opportunities, further education scholarships and more.

On the other hand, intelligent students from poor homes find it difficult to survive in school due to inadequate funds, this poses an opportunity to connect students who need help with their academics to students who can provide said help for a small fee.

While conducting our research, we found out that students in higher institutions in Nigeria get poor grades mainly due to lack of understanding of the course which is caused mainly by factors such as crowded classrooms, extremely high student to lecturer ratio, and inadequate tutoring from lecturers. Many students acknowledged that they got better grades when tutored by their peers.

The problem now is that peer tutoring in Nigerian universities is largely unstructured, untapped and unrewarded. Some students, due to introversion or pride, also find it difficult to ask for help from their peers for fear of looking less intelligent.

Pain Points

Inadequate understanding of courses caused by high student to lecturer ratio, crowded classrooms and other factors.

Shyness, introversion and fear of seeming less intelligent which makes them avoid asking for help from their friends who are more intelligent.

Unprofessional lecturers who intentionally try to make students fail.

Difficulty in finding students who are good at a particular course for one-on-one tutorials.

Empathy Map

User Persona

Solution

Our preliminary user research to validate this problem with undergraduate students in Nigeria found that students overall believe that with better understanding of their courses, they will be able to get better grades.  By creating a product that will allow students to find the best students available to tutor them in areas they need help with, they will understand better and pass better.

User Story

  • As a student I need a way to enter the course code, school, email so that I can be matched to a tutor
  • As a student I need to be matched with a relevant tutor based on the course code, school, email so that I can consider booking a class
  • As a student, I need to be able to see different tutor profiles on the search results page so that I can make the best choice
  • As a student, I need a way to know when a tutor is available so that I can book a tutorial

Information Achitecture

Sketches

Usability Study

After designing low fidelity wireframes from the round 1 findings, from the round 2 usability studies I received new insights concerning the experience and made some decisions.

Key Findings

See Tutor Profiles – If the user’s search query returns a list of tutors, users can see each tutor’s information such as name, picture, rating, pricing and school level on a card.

Users want their Personal information private and not be released unless they give consent.

Tutors wants to be able to choose when they are available and when they are not available for any contact from the platform as they might not want distractions at a point in time.

High- FI Prototype

Impact

We have tested our MVP with some current students of higher institutions in Nigeria and have received promising feedback on the viability of our product. It took great team work to pull all of this together.

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