The StREAM SaaS formerly part of the Solution Path group, now Kortext, wanted to create an industry first Edu-tech product which could be used in Universities and places of work across the UK.

They were a client during my time as a UX Lead at Answer Digital in Leeds working as the design and build partner for Solution Path.

We needed to create a product which would be appealing to both students and the university staff who's job it was to monitor their attendance, engagement and overall welfare.

To do this we needed to create a product which could be analysed at a glance across student cohorts, whilst also beign able to be viewed in-depth for each student. 

I was the UX/UI Designer on the project. I worked extremely closely on a daily basis with all members of the project team such as the front and back-end developers, testing, project manager and the product owner amongst others.

It was my role to create wireframes and designs of increasing fidelity for handover to the development as well as run research sessions with our end users in order to help inform the designs for the product.

The first task was to establish what would be the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for the project.

To do this we used the Answer offices to host a client sessions, lots of sticky notes and white-boarding to establish what were the most import things and what would need to be delivered as a bare minimum so that the client could start to earn revenue on their investment in Answer as the design and build partner.

After this we establish how the work would need to be chunked from sprint to sprint, establishing a malleable roadmap based on ticket estimates, which were subject to change depending on any unexpected challenges.

A card sort was used to help structure how the product would hand together based on expected user behaviour and where information should appear. This gave us an initial, high level information architecture.

I undertook user research remotely with staff and ran group session with students to understand better their needs and pain-points. 

Designs were then informed by this knowledge to help ensure we were designing and building something our end users could and would use.

Lastly, we thoroughly lived by Agile methodologies and ensured that we would change approach when needed, be informed by our users and deliver a MVP as our first approach.

This helped us to work naturally and honestly as a team and had plenty of contact time with each other and regular ceremonies to keep us disciplined.

Designs were created in Axure RP, which allowed for both low fidelity wireframes and more sophisticated prototyping with basic logic where necessary.

Initial concepts were often discussed as a team and we made use of anything and everything at our disposal to make sure we all had a joined up vision for the StREAM product. The meant whiteboards, big screens, 3 amigo sessions and lots more.

You can see from the images below how the designs went from sketch to production.

We conducted research with the differing types of users for the StREAM product. From University admin staff, tutors and course leaders, those working in student welfare and of course the students themselves.

We created proto-personas which were later validated fully having conducted interviews remotely and in-person.

We also used one university who we would collaborate closely with to help test ideas and have more detailed discussions about the expected roadmap of the product.

We gained access on campus to speak with students individually and as a group, letting them tell us first-hand what they thought of the product and crucially their pain-points.

This led to some important product iterations which included being more transparent in the working out of engagement scores and letting them see peer-to-peer engagement in a bid to help encourage greater usage.

We achieved in our goal of designing and building a great EduTech product for universities. 

We built strong relationships personally with the StREAM team and their end clients, which was really important in the success of the project.

Not only was the product a brilliant tool to track and management the engagement and welfare of students, but the features and overall structure of the StREAM software was created to future proof it for the client.

This meant it could and was easily adapted and used in the wider private sector world as well. 

Strategic thinking and a great agency-client partnership.

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