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Raychel.Design

Student-Centered Performance Report

My Role

Lead Designer,

End-to-End

Timeline

One Year

Product Type

Paper Report

Company

Houghton Mifflin

Harcourt

The Problem

Students need a way to see their own test results that is tailored to their age level so that they can:

  • Further engage with their own learning

  • Increase understanding of their academic performance

  • Participate in goal-setting conversations with their teachers 

Process

Discover

  • Research Review: I combed through any and all research that had already been conducted internally on how to engage with students at different age levels.

  • Comparative Analysis: I looked at both internal and external offerings that were similar to what we wanted to make. It was actually quite difficult to find other student-facing reports for younger age groups, but I looked at our parent- and teacher-facing reports as well as ones made for older students, such as SAT or AP test results.

  • Workshopping: I put together and facilitated a workshop with internal stakeholders to drive us towards determining what the MVP of this product would look like, as well as having many brainstorm sessions with the PM to bounce ideas around.

  • Wireframing: I put together very basic layouts to start to give us a framework of the general ideas we wanted to include and how that might look.

Version 1

  • Because we were focusing on a middle school audience, I wanted the report to be graphic, colorful, and playful. At the same time, it is an assessment report and should be clear, concise, and taken seriously. I brought in a limited color palette, and made sure there was plenty of white space.

  • We wanted students to interact with their results, so I added sections for them to add notes as well as prompts to incentivize them.

  • Our research showed that iconography and other familiar visuals went a long way with this age group so I incorporated as much as I could without cluttering the page, including level bars reminiscent of video games to help push a growth mindset in a way kids could quickly comprehend.

Research

Usability Testing

  • Who: 6th-8th grade educators

  • What: Unmoderated usability study & user interview over UserZoom

  • Feedback:

    • Generally liked the design and concept

    • Wanted more granular information

    • Loved the opportunities for interaction

    • Appreciated the exclusion of number scores

  • Changes: After reviewing the user research and meeting with internal stakeholders to learn more about what data could actually be included in this report, we decided to add in “average response time” and “tools used” to provide more information at the reporting category level.

Intercept Study

  • We were granted a last minute opportunity to collect feedback from teachers in person at a workshop in Nebraska. They wouldn’t have enough time for sit down interviews, so we decided to narrow our field of focus to just one page, and try to hear from as many people as possible. We collected first impression feedback from nearly 100 educators, who were very enthusiastic about the idea and overall felt very positively about the design.

Version 2

  • The main feedback we received in person was that students would need more specific prompting in order to actually utilize the notes sections I’d included. In the next version of the design, we broke each section down into short-answer fields where students could respond directly to each question that would guide them to reflect. We also included wellness data from a survey students would answer before and after the test so they could assess if their mood had affected their performance on the day of the test.

User Interviews

  • I had been adamant from the start that no student-facing product would be worth releasing if we didn’t first test it with actual students. This may seem like a no-brainer, but historically it had been difficult for us to conduct student research because of various constraints on working with children. The time finally came, and we were able to conduct moderated interviews with students in grades 6 through 8. The big complaint we heard across the board was that there was far too much text, and kids wouldn’t bother to read that much. Students didn’t like that there were four pages to the report. They did, however, respond positively to the graph and the goals sections, which were easy for them to understand.

  • I found these results encouraging- though the feedback overall boiled down to a 50/50 split, I think that’s actually fairly impressive when you consider how many kids would be excited about an assessment report. The feedback we had received was our most direct yet, and made our next steps very clear.

Outcomes

Next Steps

  1. Implementing student feedback

    • Creating a new graphic for the cover page

    • Removing resource page

    • Reducing informational text

  2. One more round of student testing

  3. Development!

Where We Left Off

  • The project is not yet finished but the end is in sight. Below you can see the updates to the cover and subject pages.

    • I eliminated informational text as well as the entire resource page.

    • I tweaked the goal questions slightly to incorporate the piece that used to be on the now-scrapped last page of the report.

    • I cut way back on content for the first page, and started working on ideas for a fun and colorful graphic (the calendar image is a placeholder).

Personal Reflection

Unfortunately, I was affected by layoffs at HMH before this product could launch. However, despite it not being finished, and it being a completely different product type than I am accustomed to working on as a UX Designer, I really appreciated this project for the opportunity to deeply engage in research and really utilize those findings to inform my designs.

 

It was also singular in how much freedom I was given in creating this product. It was truly just myself and the product owner working on this from start to finish- while we of course received feedback from others at the company, all of the ideas came directly from the two of us. It was my first time being responsible for that level of decision-making in a professional setting, and it was a great learning experience for me.

 

If I were to embark on a similar project in the future, I would feel much more prepared than I did when first taking this on. With unlimited resources and opportunities, the one thing I would change about my process would be to talk to kids sooner. It wasn’t an option, but it would have been invaluable and surely saved us a lot of time if I had been able to get feedback from the intended user base at a much earlier stage of the process.

Final Product (For Now...)

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