WORK OVERVIEW
EVERFI
A technology and data-first approach to impact and education
Background
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Homeroom is a very robust and expansive platform with over 750,000 users and extensive use cases. To help understand and align future design priorities, our team conducted a heuristic evaluation to summarize how our current experience compares against an expected criteria. As part of this initiative, I analyzed and compared across eight categories with our UX researcher.
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K12 Platform Self-Assessment - Accessibility Heuristic Evaluation
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Summary
To better understand and align our K12 platform goals for the next year, evaluate our current learner and teacher experience against nine evaluation heuristics to indicate how “teacher-ready” Homeroom is in a crowded market. For this, myself and a UX researcher did an initial assessment across the entirety of our platform against expected criteria. ISTE seal of approval, naming us one of the most accessible educational platforms in the United States.
Research Process
For this project, we took an inventory of visuals and interactions showcasing where we currently are against a comprehensive list under specific user interface heuristics. We captured any areas where we meet, did not meet, or meet with area to improve along with specific recommendations for each. Afterwards, we shared our initial findings with our research and design teams for future quarter mapping.
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Findings
Value to Customer
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Our first criteria included if Homeroom clearly shows how this helps teachers in their classroom and easily meets their instructional needs.
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Yes
Included on corporate pages are information on how EVERFI helps teachers and EVERFI mission
Within platform - courses and standard alignments available allow teachers to give quality courses without taking their own time and effort to create materials.
Teacher Ease of Use
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Homeroom has an intuitive on-boarding experience and is easy to learn for teachers and students.
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No
Guides or longer instruction time may be necessary for a teacher to understand all functionalities of the platform, courses available, and navigation tabs.
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Areas of Improvement
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• Tabs for Gradebook and Students can be confusing for teacher to understand the basic functionalities for both tabs including where to change student info and where to view or edit student grades
• My Courses: currently showcases all courses that are recommended based on first time user information of grade levels teaching and subjects along with all courses that are currently being used. Worst case scenario includes all classes available.
• Explore Courses does not include search filter - must go through carousels
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Recommendations
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• Exploring in more detail changes to create a more intuitive user experience such as current my Courses and Explore courses use cases and possible changes there
• Continuing current iteration of changes in development including consolidating students and Gradebook tabs
Students Ease of Use
Homeroom has an intuitive on-boarding experience and is easy to learn for students
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Yes
Upon log in, student is on dashboard of current courses and Start, Continue, or Review button is available.
Add Course action always available in upper right of nav - field is labeled with instructions.
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Recommendations
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• Exploring in more detail changes to create a more intuitive user experience such as current my Courses and Explore courses use cases and possible changes there
• Continuing current iteration of changes in development including consolidating students and Gradebook tabs
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Login
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Login is easy to find and use for teachers and students.
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Yes
When first entering production website, login page is first page given. UI clearly showcases login actions along with SSO options for Clever and ClassLink.
Navigation
It is easy for the user to understand where they are in Homeroom; Users can quickly find resources for what they need, and can easily backtrack if an error occurs.
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Yes, but room for improvement
Navigation is easy to find. We are following industry conventions on navigation placement.
We give teachers options but sometimes the need a second layer of understanding such as My Courses including recommended courses from the platform along with courses a teacher has already used.
Students tab is unclear as to what exactly can be done under the students tab.
Recommendations
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• Exploring in more detail changes to create a more intuitive user experience such as current my courses and Explore courses use cases and possible changes there
• Continuing current iteration of changes in development including consolidating students and Gradebook tabs
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• Exploring possible options for separating My Courses into My Recommendations and My Courses to create less confusion for My Courses tab
• Continue in consolidating Students and Gradebook tab
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UI
All UI elements such as buttons and links are arranged intuitively and consistently for the user in a way that adds value to the experience.
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Yes, but room for improvement
There is a hide option available in the 3 dot menu, and a hide student option.
However, we showcase all available options and long lists including if there are multiple courses within a class.
Recommendations
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• Create “See More” options under “My Classes” so it’s not one long list
• Students in multiple courses or classes, they have a name for each one instead of a single instance
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Content Discovery
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Homeroom makes it easy for teachers and students to find, preview, and filter courses or content.
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No
We do not include a search function to find content or functions. We currently have filter functionality when adding courses. There is currently not an easy search functionality that lends for the entire platform. Filtering options within search are not applicable but filtering is available on certain tabs.
Recommendations
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• Adding search filters on the "Explore Course" and "My Course" tabs
• Introducing a search bar on the top next to the support button for teachers to look up any resources, classes, or documentation available on the platform at any point in their user journey
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Support
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Homeroom has support for technical issues, additional tutorials for product functions, customer service, and embedded help functions as appropriate.
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Yes
Support navigation is easy to find inside the platform - at the top right corner with more subsections underneath. Support documentation and resources exist in topic sections but not all resources work. We currently offer search in our support library and have a live chat on our production site.
Takeaways
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Our heuristic evaluation was used to prioritize the next quarters priority list for criteria we did not currently meet. These recommendations for a more coherent design system resulted in the achievement of the ISTE seal of approval, naming us one of the most accessible educational platforms in the United States.
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