Approach

Brand Design

One of the first responsibilities I took was designing the brand of our product.

• The checkmark at the bottom right corner of concludio logo symbolises the square drawn at the end of each mathematical proof
• The green color symbolises success and it became the primary color of the brand as a result
• The brand’s visual design is based on sharp edges and a clean minimalist look to transmit reliability, professionalism, and to achieve the natural mapping to the look of a sharp-cornered paper, where one would solve math exercises normally

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Pain Points Analysis

First things first, I facilitated a focus group in order to discover the pain points of RWTH students when learning math. I identified the following pain points:

• They lacked previous knowledge in math
• There are too few exercises to work with
• Lectures were not interactive and motivating
• There are a lot of online tools that do not really help
• They were lacking an overview of their progress in math
• They were missing instant and detailed feedback in their homework submission

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The initial process

The entire user experience is based on conducted user research. With the problem identified, I created personas based on the data I gathered during the focus group. I then identified requirements for the interface and build the respective sitemap. Based on that I created the main user flow through task flows and interactive prototypes.

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Rapid prototyping

For each new feature, I rapidly prototyped ideas in Figma. Afterwards we reviewed and tested the solutions within the team.

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User Interface

Before I joined concludio, it was a powerful idea without a usable interface. I created the initial prototypes of how it could potentially look during my master thesis. I based the entire interface on the golden 10 usability heuristics and UI design patterns.

• The UI has at its core minimalist design and natural mapping so that the user could focus only on solving the current math exercise at hand
• Users can start solving the exercise by selecting one step at a time via a dropdown menu (mapping the real world solution method with pen & paper)
• To input math-expressions the user can use their own keyboard, in-app virtual keyboard or handwriting

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User Evaluations

Since we were only two people working on the project initially, I did a lot of rapid prototyping for any new feature in Figma and after getting feedback within the team, went straight on to development. The frontend is developed in React Typescript.

During the summer semester 2020, we managed to test concludio in Uni Duisburg for a full course, and during that time I also conducted user-studies with students of STEM and economics background.

• The students who are comfortable in math, find it quite easy to use, while the opposite is for the students who do not like math or are not familiar with math formalities
• After integrating in-app guides, video tutorials and hints, the students found it easier to solve the exercises
• Real-time feedback is one of the core features that assists students towards a correct solution

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Fullstory Observations

Every week, I checked video recordings of customer interactions in the interface in order to detect any usability problems and frustrations. Through a rainbow spreadsheet, I prioritized fixing the problems that were occurring most often, or that created the most frustration.

Results

concludio is now not operating anymore. We managed to have a small student customer base (B2C), but we couldn't accomplish our vision and make concludio a standard solution for the math lectures in german universities (B2B) within a year.