Smart People Inc.— UX Case Study Part 1

Kevin Patel
Nov 1 · 6 min read

Project 3 : An app for students who are unable to attend summer camp

Objectives :

Goals for this iOS app and case study :

  1. Analyse our client Smart People Inc. needs and problems and provide them with Mid-Fi wireframes.
  2. Conduct user interviews and surveys to better understand the problems faced by students who are unable to attend summer camp and provide them with a means to attend it using a 100% digital experience.
  3. Ideate a solution to problems faced by students.
  4. Design a solution to solve the main pain point students.
  5. Create a Mid-Fi prototype for our client and stakeholders

With that being said let’s get started.

Your mission if you choose to accept

The Client : Smart People Inc.

  • Currently, they do three four-week camps each summer
  • A course has around 20 activities and 20 lessons
  • Out of these activities and lessons, students get to decide which 10 they want to take
  • If they are willing to join more sessions, they can either be put in the waiting list or ask to volunteer
  • All attendees receive feedback from other students and their coaches
  • Coaches follow student progress, in order to effectively asses them and be able to co-create the most adequate learning path together
  • Smart People Inc. has a lot of material in the various formats already developed after years of running the camp and school
  • Smart People Inc. would like to provide a 100% digital solution to the students who are unable to attend the camps

The Challenge :

How do we provide a digital experience to the students who are unable to attend the summer camp. What kind of activities can we provide the students that will help them learn a language in a fun way without have to take the conventional lessons. How do we design this experience to be interactive and engaging while learning something new during the summer time vacations.


The TEAM ( #teamrascals )

This week was a mission to kind the coolest summer camp experience for students who are unable to attend an in-person summer camp, and for this I joined forces with the wizard of oz Madaline McCrary.

We had an intense week of defining and ideating on a solution we could propose to our client, that would help bring in more students to the summer camps courses they offer via a 100% digital experience.

The Planning :


User Research :

Key data points from our interviews and surveys

73.5 % were in the age group of 17 to 21 and use smartphones as their primary device for communication

58.8% prefer visual learning style

26.5% prefer and auditory style

41.2% prefer reading / writing style

41.2% prefer hands-on style

55.9% said it was important for them to have an activity linked to each lesson.

Other key data points what we found should that the main reasons for a student not to attend summer camp were as follow,

58.8% said that the would prefer taking a digital form of summer camp as it would provide them with the flexibility of doing the camp at the time that best suits them

41.1% said it would be more cost friendly to attend a digital version than a attending a full time summer camp

Calculating…….

Combined with the user interviews we conducted it had become clear that the user’s wanted to attend a summer camp and learn new language by doing a fun activity. Based on the result, here is our user persona and his typical journey map.


User Persona :

Our user person is Max a student who wants to learn german.


User Journey Map :


Problem Statement :


Our Solution:

Our solution is to create an app where students can browse and find fun summer camp activities happening around them in the language they want to learn. After they have found the activities they want to attend, they can enrol themselves into only the activities that interest them and attend them on their own time.

The final product is to provide an in-person local activity which the students can take in order to fill their summer, while learning a language in a fun and engaging way.

They also have a buddy system where they can chat with fellow teens enrolled in the application as well as chat with their consular.

The User Flow :

We started by designing the typical user flow a student, from sign up to booking an activity via the mobile application.

Test Scenarios :

We had planned 2 test scenarios

First one was to use the application before signing up and the second one was the login.

You can use the application and it is only when you have selected your activity then you sign up and choose a payment plan.

After you choose the payment plan you will be assigned to a camper group where you have various activities to participate.

During the waiting time before the in-person activity, we provide the materials for language learning in the format of video or reading article on the activity you will be performing.

The Prototype :

We created low-fi version of our app and tested it with our users and based on their insights we designed our mid-fi wireframes.

Once we have completed our mid-fi prototype, we re-tested it with our user and had a lot of good feedback about the screens and what would we improve in them.

Last stage we created a mid-fi prototype and tested it with ours users. This time we got more knowledge on the potential improvements we have to make in the interactions of the prototype.

With the final iteration of our prototype completed, we went back and started our final solution design, an MVP

Minimum Viable Product :

Here are the results, The Interactive Online Marvel Version

Next Steps :

As next steps we want to add an online chat system with the buddy and counsellor.

Add a map of the city where teens can find their activities with and interactive path map.

Dig deeper into the core functionalities and refine them even more with each iteration.


Conclusion :

It has been an intense week with up’s and down, then there was big PIVOT as well,

😆 😆

that really shook our planning, but finally were regrouped and re-prioritised our tasks and got back on track to complete this app. It was really fun to finish this first version of the app, We will be coming back in week 6 with a more detailed and visually oriented version of this app.

Thank you for your time and see you soon !!

Kevin Patel

Written by

UI Designer/ Developer. Student @IronHack UI/UX Bootcamp Paris

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