OVERVIEW
Attie is a mobile app that centralizes learning progress, assignments, and personalized feedback in one platform.
This was a meaningful “with my students, for my students” project where I identified pain points in the current communication workflow between tutors and students, then I prioritized and developed the most critical features needed to address these challenges.
TOOLS
Figma
Zoom
Background
Attie Language Academy serves students from elementary to middle-aged adults honing their English reading, writing, and speaking skills. As a tutor for over a year working with 10+ students in 1:1 sessions, I had direct insight into workflow pain points around progress tracking, assignments, and feedback delivery between instructors, students, and sometimes parents.
User Research
To understand the broader challenges in academic communication and task management, I spoke with my students and educators over several months.
❗Scattered assignment management: mixed physical/digital workflow creates gaps in assignment tracking and students spend major time calling out their answers out loud for their tutors to correct during class. Tutors aren’t able to check whether students are making correct revisions in their physical workbook.
💡 Middle-aged students who enrolled in Attie to improve their casual conversational skills had more motivation than students in primary ~ high school.
❗Difficult to review past assignments: class updates get buried in email threads. This especially affects students who rely on their parent’s emails. Eventually, students forget what they learned.
User Persona
Our primary stakeholders are tutors and students. I designed the mobile app with Jacob’s persona in mind, as ESL students still attending school often juggle both school assignments and tasks from tutoring sessions. They also struggle to stay motivated, highlighting the need for a platform to track their progress.
Problem Statement
“Students need a centralized platform to view assignments and instructor feedback because updates and homework sent through Gmail often get buried in threads, causing them to miss deadlines and lose track of progress.”
Defining MVP
A student-centered academic dashboard that helps students like Jacob consolidate assignments, track deadlines, and monitor their academic progress in one organized interface, eliminating missed deadlines and lost feedback in email threads.
Why a mobile app?
Since physical writing helps with retention and deeper processing, many assignments are completed in physical workbooks. A mobile app will allow students to quickly take photos of completed assignments and easily access instructor’s feedback.
Dashboard
Assignment status tracking (not started, in progress, submitted, graded)
Clear due dates with visual priority indicators
Assignment is automatically displayed as teachers upload them
Archive of completed assignments with attached teacher feedback
Gamified experience
Speak or type message to Attie the chatbot using “word of the day”
“word of the day” corresponds to student’s English level set by the academy admin
Get immediate suggestion and detailed feedback
Provide incentive to retry = completing activities successfully unlocks puzzle pieces that reveal memes or funny pictures
Feedback
When students open an assignment, they will be able to:
view tutor’s general feedback about class
interactively view tutor’s feedback for specific questions on submitted work
Write replies below each feedback for any questions
Success Metrics
% increased assignment completion rate
% of students who interact with the gamified activity at east 6 times per week and show consistent improvement in vocabulary usage
% of instructor feedback viewed by students within 48 hours of being posted
The Vision
As I spoke with students and gained deeper insights, I iteratively polished my wireframes. My vision for Attie became clearer and led to the development of the user flow, design system, and hi-fidelity screens.
Welcome to Attie! First, select your role and tutor so you can properly receive feedbacks and assignments from them.
ONBOARDING
Have a casual conversation with Attie,. You can speak or write your responses and Attie will provide detailed feedback on your pronunciation or grammar structure. You'll be rewarded with puzzle pieces that unlock a hidden image.
VOCAB OF THE DAY
It looks like your tutor has uploaded an assignment including a feedback of today’s reading class. Submit your assignment!
ASSIGNMENTS
You don’t have to worry about writing down everything your tutor says. Instead, actively listen while they speak and review their corrections on the app afterwards!
REVIEW FEEDBACK
User Testing
I asked 5 of my students who fit my persona to explore my prototype.
Average Student Satisfaction
2.0
Current workflow
4.4
Prototype
120% increase in satisfaction
Task 1: Complete your vocabulary activity and see what you win!
4.6/5
Enjoyable Rating
Completion rate
100%
💡 Students liked how they could practice applying the vocabulary words in actual conversations.
💡 Students appreciated the guidance provided by the chatbot.
Task 2: For today’s reading class, see what feedback your tutor has given you and submit your assignment.
4.4/5
Easiness Rating
Completion rate
80%
💡 Some students were already used to submitting their work online, while some (primary school students) were still used to completing theirs on paper.
Reflection
Co-designing Attie with my students and imagining how this app could potentially advocate for them made this project valuable.
What I learned and would do in the future:
☝️ Design a web interface. A web interface would easily allow teachers to share their screen through Zoom and students to view the corrections and explanations being given in real-time.
✌️ Design interface for tutors and admins. Tutors and admins are responsible for determining each students’ English levels. They are also our key stakeholders that would need an interface to assign assignments, manage multiple students, efficiently provide feedback, etc.
☝️+✌️ Translation feature for Attie chatbot. I would carry out additional user research with a more diverse group of students to determine whether a translation feature is necessary. While the “Vocab of the Day” is already tailored to their proficiency level, translation could be offered as an optional feature.
️️️✌️+✌️ Practice communicating research procedures to younger users. The biggest limitation I faced during user testing was balancing the constraints of the prototype with making sure my students fully understood the research procedures. This was especially challenging given their younger age and varying levels of comprehension.
carisohjung@gmail.com