HIFIVE TUTORING
Reimagining the face of a student-led EdTech startup.
Team__
2 Product Leads, 5 Product Designers, 1 Internal Stakeholder (Founder)
Disciplines__
UI/UX Design, UX Research, Branding
Tools__
Figma, Wix, Notion
Timeline__
Jan 2023 — May 2023
Context
Take a look at the figures below.
Even without crucial elements (names, colors, logos), it is still immediately apparent which companies are which.
The EdTech sector is growing faster than ever! Especially post-pandemic, the demand for accessible, individualized, and impactful education is rising and startups like HiFive are likewise rising to meet the challenge. However, it’s clear from the examples above that a good company credo is not enough – one must also establish strong brand awareness in the target market and adopt effective UI/UX principles to guide clients through their digital services.
With this in mind, HiFive approached us with the following question:
How might we optimize HiFive’s website and branding to increase brand awareness and encourage more engagement?
Overview
Who is HiFive Tutoring?
HiFive Tutoring is an EdTech startup offering personalized tutoring services and study curriculum to students of all learning backgrounds. Yet as a startup, the site struggles to establish itself among the plethora of existing EdTech companies.
As senior product design consultant at DiversaTech Consulting, my team and I worked closely with HiFive founder Avanthika Ramesh to develop a branding refresh and UI/UX overhaul.
Discovery
Let’s break down brand awareness a little further.
The main components of brand awareness [1] include the following:
(1) Identifying and understanding your target demographic
(2) Creating a company name, logo, and slogans
(3) Adding value through packaging, location, service, special events, etc.
(4) Advertising
(5) After-sale follow-up and customer relations management
[1] Gustafson, Tara, and Brian Chabot. "Brand awareness." Cornell Maple Bulletin 105.1 (2007): 1-5.
For the purposes of our scope, we may focus on the first two points.
(1) Identifying and understanding your target demographic.
Identifying our target demographic is simple — HiFive primarily targets K-12 Gen-Z/Gen-Alpha students and their parents. Though HiFive lists support for postgraduate programs as part of their services online, we simplified the target demographic to the aforementioned categories to refine our recommendations.
We conducted a survey with more than 85 respondents representing five distinct demographic groups. The survey aimed to assess preferences in learning methods, favored topics for learning, familiarity with competitors, and other related metrics.
We then followed up on select individuals from our pool of participants to gather more detailed insights into their online learning behaviors, exploring motivations and identifying challenges they encounter.
Based on these findings, we analyzed and created five user personas. These personas were instrumental in humanizing our design process and ensuring that all subsequent steps remained focused on the user's needs.
(2) Creating a company name, logo, and slogans.
HiFive already has a name, check. Logo … check? Slogan? A cursory glance over HiFive’s webpage and socials reveals conflicting graphic assets and an unscalable logo. Meanwhile, a slogan is crucial for establishing HiFive’s unique value proposition at a glance, something that is all the more important for its minimal footprint in the EdTech market. Let’s come back to this later!
We conducted market research on five competitors – covering both online tutoring services and general EdTech companies – to identify our competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as areas of opportunity available to HiFive.
Key Insights
So what did we learn?
In a sea of solutions, tailored experiences matter.
Students of all demographics hold a variety of interests, and a key weakness of competitors is a fundamental inability to capture such diverse needs with a broader business model. HiFive can leverage their one-on-one tutoring model to drive impact and differentiate themselves from competitors by amplifying its ‘by students, for students’ message.
From the body copy to the colors, companies’ online presences tell a story.
A company’s website is its most important customer-facing tool to attract an audience, promote its services, and drive engagement! In contrast to its competitors, HiFive’s website suffers from a lack of coherence.
(Old landing page ←)
Ideation
Upon evaluating our research insights, we came up with the following ideas for the HiFive website and mapped them onto an Impact-Effort Matrix.
Let’s go over the decision-making process here.
Click on each section below to expand on the items that our team proposed in the first rounds of ideation.
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As a tutoring startup with a strong local presence, HiFive already has testimonials from parents and students that shine a dazzling light on the prowess of its tutors. Placing them at the forefront of HiFive’s website improves the credibility of the company with minimal effort.
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Incorporating a dedicated Blog section with study tips, parent resources, and relevant topics can position the HiFive website as a regular destination for existing visitors, while simultaneously improving SEO to bump HiFive up in search results.
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We envisioned a complete overhaul of the existing Team page, which at present introduces HiFive’s staff with bullet point credentials on simple cards. However, as the lead for the Team page, I determined that it would be an improbable task to coordinate unique self-introductions from all 52 team members.
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Alongside the written entries in the Blog section, we imagined educational videos providing supplementary content in a fun, informative way that puts a face to the name(s) of HiFive tutors. However, for reasons similar to the bios, we found that it would be infeasible in the time allotted for this project.
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In an attempt to appeal to the Gen-Z audience, we thought of a learning-style-based personality quiz to implement onto the HiFive website. Unfortunately, this feature would have had minimal impact without co-implementation of the tutor bios, so both were deemed infeasible for this project.
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Simple, yet integral to any service-centric website.
Besides the features, we also began to develop a branding style guide for HiFive.
I spearheaded this part of the project, and with critical input from my team and our stakeholder, presented my team with a finalized style guide to employ in our web prototypes. View my work below!
(P.S. Click to go back and forth between the old and new branding)
Branding
View the different stages of our process below – from wireframes to prototypes.
Prototyping
Final Solution
Intuitive navigation at every turn, for every user.
We redesigned the landing page to frame HiFive’s unique value proposition at the front and center, then each following section guides the user through offerings, success stories and parent testimonials, a link to the company mission statement, then to links that take the user where they need to go – learners, parents, and prospective team members alike can find what they need on HiFive’s new website.
Links and footers on the other pages direct users to relevant pages so each page is seamlessly integrated into the HiFive website flow.
This feature also populates the site with relevant and engaging information which improves SEO to bump HiFive up in search results, boosting awareness and discoverability.
A glimpse into HiFive’s offerings.
We improved upon the dedicated Blog section with study tips, parent resources, and other related topics.
Written in relatable, authentic language that reflects HiFive’s credo, these blogs serve as a way for parents and students to familiarize themselves with the voice and energy behind HiFive, offering users greater confidence in HiFive’s unique services.
Get to know who you’ll be working with.
HiFive’s strongest offering is their personalized approach to education – and that starts with their educators. On our revamped Team page, expect vibrant, engaging colors and an efficient filtering system to match you with the ideal tutor.
We've also upgraded to pagination for a clearer, less overwhelming display of our tutors.
Implementation and next steps
The branding guidelines, adjusted user flow, and blog are all live now.
Because of limitations with HiFive's hosting platform, Wix, the Team page could not be fully implemented according to the proposed prototype.
While a more engaging Team page was identified as a priority during discussions between the team and HiFive’s founder, it was ultimately implemented in a modified format to accommodate these limitations, with innovative workarounds being explored as next steps.
What are the next steps?
Social media marketing rollout
HiFive should develop a social media marketing strategy to leverage its fresh image – and reach the audience it hopes to gain brand recognition in.
HiFive faced two major challenges in establishing brand awareness: (1) A lack of visual and corporate identity and (2) a minimal social media presence to market the said identity.
Now that our team has tackled the former, HiFive should direct its attention to addressing the latter.
Consistent branding
Maintaining consistency across all platforms and pages is crucial as HiFive continues to evolve and expand in the coming years.
Whether it involves routine maintenance or introducing new features, adhering to established brand guidelines will uphold the integrity and coherence of HiFive's online presence.
Many thanks to my team at DiversaTech for this experience, my PMs Gigi and Oliver for their support, and Avanthika Ramesh for her guidance!
Reflections
Working within limitations to deliver a timely product.
Because of limitations with HiFive's hosting platform, Wix, the Team page could not be fully implemented according to the proposed prototype.
While a more engaging Team page was identified as a priority during discussions between the team and HiFive’s founder, it was ultimately implemented in a modified format to accommodate these limitations, with innovative workarounds being explored as next steps.
Designing in a team.
During this project, I collaborated with a team of talented designers, each contributing unique insights and skills. While initial ideation based on research was straightforward on paper, the challenge of managing visual coherence emerged during collaborative screen development.
Through this project, I recognized the importance of individual ideation in the early stages of teamwork, followed by the collective development of a cohesive style guide to guide our shared creative direction. This experience highlighted the value of ongoing communication and collaboration in achieving shared project goals with efficiency and minimal friction, and reemphasized the iterative nature of visual direction refinement for me.