Creating a System of Communication

Creating a System
of Communication

Creating a System of Communication

Overview

Overview

Overview

edcuration.com

EdCuration is an online educational marketplace that makes searching for and purchasing educational resources easy for educators and district buyers.

Project Summary

Project Summary

Project Summary

The team at EdCuration had noticed a lack of communication between their two primary user groups - educational vendors and educators.


Timeri Tolnay, the CEO of EdCuration, approached our team wanting to generate a system that would facilitate and help increase communication between the two user groups on EdCuration's site.

Role

UX Designer / UX Researcher


Timeline

3 Months


Platform

Desktop


Team

E. Michele Brumbaugh

Jason P. Lai

Kiah Szabala-Bland

Laura Goodridge

Methods Used

Initial Interviews

User persona

Storyboard

Empathy mapping

Affinity mapping

Crazy 8s

Comparative audits

Competitive audits

Usability testing

Tools

The Problem Space: Increasing Communication

How do we increase
communication?

A communication increase between the two primary user groups on edcuration.com, educators and vendors, was desired by the team at EdCuration. The thought was that an increase in communication between their two user groups would result in more sales for vendors who subscribe to the site and an overall increase in educator traffic to the site.

Our team was asked to find a way to create an engaging and intuitive way for educators to post educational materials requests (RFPs), collect bids, select offers, communicate with vendors and make purchases.

Exploration and Discovery

Exploration and Discovery

Our approach as a team was to first take a comprehensive look at the existing site for EdCuration in order to gather insight into the overall feel and organization of the site as well as to look for potential pain points that might be immediately discernible to our team.

Next we ran benchmarking studies (Competitive and Comparative audits) on the websites of companies with similar offerings. We were unable to run competitive audits on direct competitors - EdCuration is the only educational online marketplace of its kind!

Indirect Competitors We Reviewed

Comparative Analysis

What Do Educators Want?

Talking to our Target
User Group

Findings: Our User Needs

Our team interviewed six educators in different regions of North America to get a better idea of what sorts of educational materials they needed and where they typically found these materials. We discovered that in their online search for educational resources, educators -

Looked at more than one online platform to find educational resources
Were frequently looking for resources online
Valued evidence based curricula
Had criteria for curricula that included price transparency and duration
Were looking at better ways of engaging students virtually

Our team discovered that in their online search for educational resources, educators -

Looked at more than one online platform to find educational resources

Were frequently looking for resources online

Valued evidence based curricula

Had criteria for curricula that included price transparency and duration

Were looking at better ways of engaging students virtually

© 2023 E. Michele Brumbaugh