Final Designs

Epic School Plus was a massive project with features like an administrator’s dashboard, real-time usage reports, school directory, a multi-class management interface, roster integration with Clever, internal features for account management and a self service account creation flow for users. Here are some of the final designs.

The Results

The launch was incredibly successful, resulting in $10 million in qualified leads and $2.5 million in revenue within the first quarter alone. We successfully onboarded 266,000 users, while maintaining a low average of only 21 customer service tickets per week.

Diving Into the Case Study

I’ll start by providing some context for why we decided to pursue Epic School Plus. Epic School is our existing free product for educators and is utilized by over 80% of US schools with 8M monthly active users. We realized that creating a paid plan with Epic School Plus was crucial for Epic’s revenue growth, and was a response to demands from administrative leaders and teachers.

Identifying Top Features

By analyzing customer service tickets and interviewing teachers, admin leaders, and sales reps, we identified key problems. We then took those problems, ideated potential features for them and interviewed customers to get feedback. Using a prioritization matrix, we condensed and ranked our feature list. After consulting with the sales team to align with the sales cycle, we devised a two-phase launch plan: an MVP for the upcoming back-to-school season and V2 for the subsequent sales cycle early the following year.

Focusing on our Teacher User, Ms. Kelly

I’d like to focus on the following feature “allow users to be in more than one class at a time.” To understand why we’re building this feature, here’s a bit more about the problem from Ms. Kelly’s perspective.

Re-structuring to a Multi-Class, Multi-User Model

As illustrated above, research showed that teachers and students often participated in multiple classes. To accommodate the reality where many teachers and students are enrolled in multiple classes, we needed to develop a new model with a school and class level entity.

With the introduction of a “class” entity, we worked with the backend data team to determine which assets still belonged with Ms. Kelly and which ones should belong to the “class”. For example, if Ms. Kelly assigned homework to a class, then transferred out of that class, should the homework leave with her or should it stay with the class? Based on teacher interviews, we learned that it was the best experience for teachers and students if the homework stayed with the class.

Researching, Sketching & Iterating

To help Ms. Kelly create multiple classes and add co-teachers, I researched competitor apps for insight. I audited the existing Epic School app to identify reusable components. Then, I sketched my ideas, collaborating with design, product, and dev teams to refine them through brainstorming and critique sessions.

A key part of the design process was the design critique sessions. Through collective brainstorming, these sessions produced valuable feedback and novel ideas that contributed to the refinement of my designs.

Two Design Approaches

I created two design versions. The first version displays all classes as thumbnails, while the second incorporates a persistent navigation on the left side. Through user testing, I discovered that the left navigation approach offered a slightly better user experience for quicker navigation between classes.

Final Design for Multi-classes

After discussing with the product and dev teams, we decided to go with the first approach (single-page with multi-classes) as our MVP due to constrained timelines and limited resources. We decided to add in the left navigation in a subsequent release.

Designing a Student Directory

In order for Jill to be in multiple classes, her profile needs to be shared across classes. You currently can’t do this with the free version of Epic School. For Epic School Plus, I introduced a student directory feature. Teachers can now find and add students from this directory, which means students can track their progress across classes and teachers and administrators can get a comprehensive view of student activity.

Final Design to Roster Students from a Directory

Learnings

•  Big projects need a high-level design scope. Epic School Plus was a large and complex project with many features. I initially felt overwhelmed by the project’s scale, but soon realized it stemmed from a lack of clarity in the design scope. To address this, I created a journey map of every user, identified the design tasks for each user step and categorized the tasks into high level design buckets. This exercise allowed me to gain a comprehensive understanding of the design scope and facilitated the development of a strategic design roadmap.

•  It takes creativity and hard work to achieve great collaboration. After our project began, our entire U.S. dev team was replaced by a new team in India, prompting significant adjustments. Both sides had to understand each other, adapt to new routines, and manage time zone differences. Recognizing the importance of building relationships, we took a creative approach. I created a ‘get to know you’ slide deck for our pod, which quickly became popular company-wide. We used Loom for quick video updates outside of meetings and made extra time for personal chats during our meetings. These efforts helped foster team cohesion and trust.