Math ANEX
Role:
Design Lead
Duration:
November - January 2023 (12 weeks)
Tools:
Figma
Asana
Notion
Skills :
Visual Design
Wireframing & Prototyping
Research
Design handoff
What is Math ANEX?
Math ANEX creates sophisticated math assessments that evaluate students' knowledge application and communication abilities, not just factual recall.
The company specializes in analyzing assessment responses and providing detailed insights to teachers and school administrators. These insights help educators develop more informed strategies and action plans tailored to their students' needs.
Problem
Managers’ and Analysts' processes to get to their grading portal are time-consuming.
As Math ANEX continually adds new school districts to its clientele, Managers and Analysts will face the challenge of managing more projects in less time. The current complexity of the internal platform slows down the process.
Previous Findings
This problem was confirmed based on months of research. With each project as a Manager, I received feedback from the Analysts about how the project went regarding workload, team size, and resource allocations. Along with those perspectives, working with my project manager we gathered aspects like what’s working, what’s not working, and further suggestions.
Top Insights:
Centralized dashboard consolidating
Structured onboarding process
Project details and resources in one place
Prioritizing intuitive information architecture, layout, and user experience
This lead me to the solution space.
Solution
Develop an internal unified platform with a focus on user-friendliness to reduce frustration and save time.
With new Analysts and Managers joining the team every quarter, the site must have a balance of important information and easy navigation.
After
Before
Metrics
After A/B testing against their current internal platform, the outcome was:
200x speed completing two activities: grading task and navigating to the desired section
Users
Analysts:
Each team of Analysts is trained specifically to analyze a mathematical problem that students have already answered and use a rubric to grade the ways of thinking the student made.
Managers:
The manager oversees all analysis for that assessment item and makes sure to. They are tasked to create a rubric for grading for each project and align with the operation manager throughout the process to stay within the timeline of deliverables
Competitive Analysis:
For this project, the focus is for Managers and Analysts which means the whole purpose is the grader's point of view.
I followed the user flows of top education apps from the teachers' point of view to understand how they set up grading platforms successfully. I paid special attention to the information architecture, differences in student and teacher perspectives, and how they condensed information to minimize cognitive load.
Takeaway: Although these platforms share similarities in terms of functionality, they differ in the functionalities revolving around students and grading.
Nearpod
Helps educators make any lesson interactive whether in the classroom or virtual.
Google Classroom
Free blended learning platform for educational institutions
Canvas
Course management system that supports online learning and teaching
Khan Academy
Creating a set of online tools that help educate students.
Stakeholders
Patrick Callahan
CEO
Angela Dancheva
Op Project Manager
Snehita Sana
Op Project Manager
Stakeholder Points
I worked closely with stakeholders, starting by understanding their core problems. From there, I found a compromise between their ideal vision and a minimum viable product that met immediate needs, allowing for future iterations.
Takeaways:
Prioritizing design improvements for most problematic areas over full overhaul.
Incorporating current information instead of complete redesign for efficiency.
Interactive onboarding videos deferred to next iteration.
User Testing
I interviewed 3 Managers and 3 Analysts and these were the main pain points with the current application.
Analyst #1
“I barely use any of the features, only the project overview page to grade assignments”
Analyst #2
“Having too many projects are listed and having to join a project takes too many extra steps”
Main User Interview Takeaways:
Manager # 1
“I wish there was a place where I could have all the features in one place (a Dashboard) because there’s currently too many clicks”
Manager #2
“The design of the website needs improvement. It feels outdated and needs to be more visually appealing”
Manager #3
“When I was onboarded, there wasn’t really a system and I was thrown into a project. I wish I was a step-by-step system for being onboarded”
Takeaways:
Simplify navigation for analysts by consolidating grading categories into one tab.
Automatically assign Managers and Analysts to their active projects instead of requiring manual searching.
Organize grading information better, grouping related data to reduce cognitive load.
Improve Resources' relevance and accessibility post-onboarding for Managers and Analysts to encourage ongoing use.
Based on the feedback gathered, I started sketching and wireframing. I reduced the number of screens and tabs and created a centralized home dashboard that consolidated the key components and information that managers and analysts use daily.
This streamlined approach aimed to accelerate their workflow and create a speedier work process.
Reframing Designs
Math ANEX already provided Managers and Analysts an abundance of great detailed information, it was more about condensing and decreasing the cognitive load.
After exploring different explorations and concepts independently, I had a design review with the founders to get their thoughts and feedback.
Only displaying automatically assigned active projects
Before: Breakdown of Current Experience
The Welcome tab is not being utilized and “Categorize Ways of Explanation” is used as the landing page
Analysts and Managers has access to all Math ANEX projects, which is a security issue.
Analysts and Managers have to search for projects through the list in order to start the project which is inefficient
Currently nothing is being updated, so managers and analysts have never used this.
After: New Project Design
Projects
Analyst
Log Out
Strawberries Project
“Three people pick strawberries from 48 rows in 8 hours. How many hours do five people need to pick strawberries from 20 rows?”
12/15 - 1/15
Timeline
Joey’s Car Project
“Joey is taking a roadtrip with his friends. In 2 hours 40 mins, a their car travels 100km. At what speed is the car traveling?”
12/16 - 1/20
Timeline
Current Projects
Only active projects are listed that Analyst or Manager is assigned to
Overview of project listed with important dates, description, people, and project name
Section name changed to “Projects” as new employees were confused on “Categorize Ways of Thinking”
Hierarchical sections prioritizing the most important components
Before: Breakdown of Current Experience
Information is cluttered, where everything is placed on one table
Analysts don’t utilize this page as much, only to see their hours worked
After: New Overview Design
Each important section is sectioned into different tables for organization
Clearly defined hours and payment for inputted days
Overview
Manager
Log Out
Project Overview
Dec 15, 2022 - Dec 23, 2022
6 Hours 57 Minutes 58 Seconds
Total Hours Worked
175
Salary
Project
Project Timeline
Last Analyzed
# Calibration
Components Per Hour
Time Worked (H:M:S) *
Strawberry Project
Dec 15 2022 - Jan 15 2023
Dec 23, 2022
5
2,000
2:35:38
Joey’s Car Project
Dec 16 2022 - Jan 20 2023
Dec 23, 2022
4
2,300
4:22:20
Analyst QC Overview
Project
Last QC
QC
Unresolved Score
Review Responses
Jimmy King
12/15/2022
1
90 %
Review QC’s
Samantha Gomez
12/15/2022
2
70%
Review QC’s
Your QC Overview
Project
QC
Daily QC Average
Resolved %
Analyzed Since Last QC
Strawberry Project
1
98.00%
100%
200
Joey’s Car Project
2
100%
100%
350
Categorized resources for quick question referencing
Before: Breakdown of Current Experience
Resources are currently a hyperlink to a document, which is timely when referencing a quick question.
After: New Resources Design
Resources
Analyst
Log Out
Resource Hub
Resource Hub
Search
Duplicate
Try Notion
Resource page is imbedded onto webpage
Notion is used for organization, easy to edit, and searchable moments so finding specific questions will take less time
Manager and Analyst resources are on one page, but in different sections so that everything is in one place
Final Designs
After multiple iterations with users and stakeholder check-ins, the final product was produced. All points were implemented through the designs, specifically focusing on utilizing information already provided while keeping the simplicity and minimalism of the brand. Both stakeholders and users were thrilled about the development of the concept and eagerly anticipated using the implemented product.
I handed the designs to the developers to implement with annotations to be implemented in the new iteration of the internal website.
Manager
Analyst
Challenges and Learnings
Autonomy
Handling a project end-to-end as a sole designer who was also in charge of research was difficult but very rewarding. It helped me make quicker and more confident decisions in future projects.
Focus and Alignment
The stakeholders were so enthusiastic about the concept that they suggested too many diverse features to implement within the limited timeframe. To align everyone, I had to shift the discussion to focus on meeting the needs of the analysts and managers as end-users.