Redesigning the Meritnation website — a UX case study

Disclaimer: This project was in collaboration with Ruvi Rajeshwari Misra for a college assignment and is not made, owned, or affiliated directly to Meritnation.

Meritnation is an online education portal that provides interactive study material for students of classes 1st to 12th for CBSE, ICSE and certain state boards. It was the first of its own kind to launch E-learning in India. The website consists of live classes, multimedia tutorials, interactive exercises, practice tests and expert help. They also provide free NCERT solutions, subject-wise synopsis and chapter-wise revision notes for classes 1st to 12th for a thorough understanding of concepts right from a basic to an advanced level of difficulty.

But with all that being said, Meritnation is running low on Profit and has hardly received any funds since 2017. With a lot of heavy competition coming around we did a UX case study to find out the existing problems with the interface, understand the needs of the consumers and propose solutions.

Stakeholders

We tried understanding who all get affected by the brand or can affect the brand. So here is the stakeholder mapping:

1. Investors
2. Management
3. Sales department
4. Marketing
5. Employees/Brand
6. Students
7. Parents
8. Teachers
9. People looking for Employment

Analyzing the needs of the brand vs the customers

Brand:

1. The Brand has a website along with a dedicated NCERT solutions app and a dedicated teacher connect app. The brand felt that this would improve Functionality and communication.
2. The brand believes is recurring the maximum amount of registrations from the website viewers. Requests to register will pop up at different times on the website.
3. The brand encourages parents and teachers along with the students to register using the 3 different options available and use the available content.
4. The header on the Meritnation website has dedicated tabs for NCERT solutions, entrance exams, and respective tabs for classes from I to XII. The brand feels this would engage the user on first look.
5. The Brand feels the courses should be fully paid in advance on a yearly basis to establish long term relationships with the students.

Customer:

1. Customers find it confusing to use apps for specific functions as they feel it is convenient to have everything in one place, the website on the desktop version is used mostly.
2. Customer finds the request to login irritating because as a viewer he first wants to analyse the scope between him and the services rather than just joining.
3. Whereas the interface is similar for all three irrespective of the filter applications, the user finds it useless and hence it does not make any difference in approach.
4. The user feels that it would be more convenient if the header had Board categories, Class groups (example: 1- 5, 11–12) and a combined section for entrance exam instead of the existing interface.
5. Whereas the customer feels that the payment should be done on a monthly basis in case if someone wants to leave in the middle. Also, a week or two demo class would be more helpful to build trust.

Analyzing the existing Interface

We did a detailed analysis of the existing Interface and found some drawbacks that we found. The Interface provided for three different categories i.e. Student, Teacher & Parent is the same. The tabs on the home page have a clean layout but lack the navigation to a required page. You’ll have to scroll all the way. There is no prominent Contact us Button. The contact details they provide are the headquarter’s phone number and local office address which is not that handy. The classes for certain features are pre-selected and it’s hard to find the edit option making it very confusing. The FAQ options don’t really answer any queries specifically asked. It will show you related search answers asked by the students. No 24x7 chat option available. Communication between the student and teacher is not possible. On the footer there is an option to see all schools that have tie-ups with Meritnation, It will provide you with a list of 32 countries but other than India nothing shows up on any tab. Hence wasting the browsing time. The footer involved a lot of the frequently searched categories which a user feels is hard to find. There are glitches with logging in and sign up.

Meritnation caters to the learning needs of school students of classes I — XII across leading educational boards. At Meritnation, they believe that with technology we can transcend traditional boundaries and truly enable customized self-paced learning. Meritnation provides a deeper understanding of the subject in a shorter time and helps to solve and understand problems.

In the ’90s tuition was a bad thing, in 2010 tuition was status, 2015 tuition was a necessity and in 2020 it has become about enhancing skills beforehand. Syllabus remained the same throughout the years. Understanding of concepts and the learning curve remained the same in all these years. So the same remains true for the e-learning platforms.

Original Website

Analyzing different customer clusters

Cluster 1: Students

There are Students who are of age 07 years to 24 years old and there are no gender restrictions. Students demand variety in courses, with flexible time and a more sorted layout, a better interface for study material, tutorials, test papers and live classes.

Cluster 2: Teachers/ Faculty

There are teachers from 23 years to 60 years old and there are no gender restrictions. The minimum education qualification requires graduation, can be in any specific subject(s). Should have proper command over his/her skill and Communication skills are a must. Any teacher can apply from all over India.

Cluster 3: Parents

There is a virtual interaction platform between the teacher and parents and a forum to clear doubts as well as a progress tracking feature.

Suggesting changes/ additions to Improve the User Experience.

While analysing the interface we thought of some improvements and changes like an improved header with a more efficient and organised tab category. Addition of a prominent contact, testimonial and about us tabs as the user would be interested in knowing what he is investing into. A dedicated interface of Student, Teacher and Parent with features in lieu of their usage and requirements. Adding a feature to avail demo trial classes for the paid programmes. Also payment of programs on a monthly/ yearly basis for customer convenience and making the website responsive along with changing the colour scheme.

SWOT Analysis

Strengths:

• India’s first online education platform.
• Provides free solutions mainly for — mathematics and science for K12 of popular national Indian curriculum viz. CBSE and ICSE.
• Some State Board’s curriculum was added.
• Paid product for online assessment and teaching solutions — provides resources to kids for self-study after school.
• Test prep product for engineering and medical entrance examinations.
• high-quality study material.
• Live classes for various subjects
• Proficiency Tests & Olympiad Packs for specific exam requirements.
• Customized learning solutions.
• Certified courses.
• You can ask your doubts in the Meritnation community and get them solved or answer other’s questions.

Weaknesses:

• Not enough investments/funds received.
• Not enough workforce.
• The material does not involve heavy visuals which is a set back for the brand.
• The video lectures are very long and get boring.
• They claim to use technology very well but actually haven’t on the front end.
• Dissatisfaction in customers.

Opportunities:

• Links with 8 foreign countries.
• Social media can help with reaching new customers.
• Access to International talent.
• Can use artificial intelligence.
• Diversify in fields.
• Growing market size and changing consumer preference.
• Tie-ups with leading Schools and Institutes.

Threats:

• Heavy Competition by BYJU’s.
• Recurring losses and Threats.
• Prices change may lead to the withdrawal of users.
• The growing inequality is one of the biggest threats to not only globalisation but also to capitalism. Lower demand for its products from middle-class customers.
• Threats of new entrants because of reducing costs and increasing efficiencies

Information Hierarchy

1. Courses

• Classes 1–12th
• Entrance exam prep

2. Study Material

• NCERT Solutions
• Other Book Solutions
• Test papers
• Demo Video lectures
• Demo classes
• Previous year questions

3. Registration

• Student
• Parent
• Teacher

4. Purchase Course

• All Subject Live Classes. (study material, tests, homework help and more).
• All Subject Self study. (study material, tests, homework help and more).
• Subject Live (1) + Other subjects. Self-study.
• HP 8 Pro tablet + offline course.
• Customized course.

5. Ask & Answer

• Search
• Recommended questions
• My Q&A
• School Talk

6. My Account

• My Profile
• My School
• Take a break
• Career guidance

7. About us

• Contact us
• Our Team

8. Our Results

9. Jobs

10. T&C

Navigation Flow

This is the Navigation, this helps us arrange different items and place the right content in the right place. It’s an essential part of the website and it helps arrange menus, categories, features. This also helps us know how the website will basically function.

Suggested Navigation Flow

Style Guide

The Style guide is like a directory to the website. It consists details of the color scheme, the style followed, logo used etcetera.

Suggested Style Guide

Wireframes

We redesigned website and therefore created wireframes for the respective pages. We did it for the desktop and the mobile version.

DESKTOP VERSION

HOME PAGE

LOGIN PAGE

SIGN UP PAGE

COURSES PAGE

COURSES — SCHOOLING

PROGRAMS

TESTIMONIALS PAGE

CONTACT US PAGE

ABOUT US — BRIEF

ABOUT US — OUR TEAM

MOBILE VERSION

Prototype

Based on the wireframes, we created the prototype of the home page using the Style guide we made.

HOME PAGE PROTOTYPE

Thank You!

This is my first article on Medium and I’m currently studying Visual Communication at Unitedworld Institute of Design Ahmedabad, India. We have recently finished a module in UX and had the amazing opportunity to work with briefs like this. I hope you liked it. I’m Shayoni. Thanks!

This was a collaborative project by: