Overview of the App

Tutoring Track: Simplifying the Student-Tutor Experience

Tutoring Track is a mobile app designed to make life easier for students and tutors by improving communication, simplifying scheduling, and keeping everything in one place. It’s built to address common challenges like missed emails, confusing schedules, and the lack of a centralized system to manage feedback and progress.

Key Features

1. Profile Management: A place where students and tutors can view or update key information, helping tutors personalize their support based on individual needs.

2. Upcoming Events: A shared calendar that keeps everyone on the same page, making it easier to schedule and reschedule tutoring sessions without the hassle.

3. Tutors’ Feedback: A space where tutors can leave notes, share assignments, and recommend resources, so students always know what to focus on next.

4. Reflection: A tool that lets students jot down their thoughts after sessions, giving tutors insights into what’s working and what might need more attention.

5. Messaging: A built-in chat system that allows students and tutors to communicate instantly without relying on external emails. This feature supports quick updates, session reminders, and real-time clarifications.

How It Works

Tutoring Track is all about improving how students and tutors work together. The app connects people in a way that feels simple and natural while solving real problems. Instead of juggling emails or separate tools, users can handle everything right from the app, whether it’s planning a session, sharing feedback, sending a message, or just staying in touch.

Why It’s Different

What sets Tutoring Track apart is how it supports both the practical and personal sides of tutoring. It doesn’t just help with scheduling; it makes space for real communication and reflection, which helps build stronger connections between students and tutors. Features like shared calendars, feedback tools, messaging, and reflection entries make sure that everyone stays on track while also encouraging a better understanding of each other’s needs.

Tutoring Track is more than just an app. It’s a way to make tutoring feel smoother and more effective for everyone involved. Whether it’s staying organized, sharing progress, tackling new challenges, or simply staying in touch, it’s built to make the tutoring process better from start to finish.

A Quick Tour of the App

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_rqCVoiU6g 

Interactive Design Process

The interactive design process of the tutoring app began when one of the designers identified key difficulties in managing the language tutoring program she oversees, including scheduling, event tracking, communication challenges, and the impact of students’ mental health on tutors’ effectiveness. The process was divided into several phases: problem space identification, requirements gathering, ideation, prototyping, and usability testing.

Problem Space and Requirements Gathering

The initial phase involved interviews with program participants to identify problems and gather feedback. Tutors and students highlighted the need for better communication tools, a centralized calendar, and mechanisms for addressing the mental health challenges of students that could affect their engagement. Based on this, the team conducted in-depth interviews to explore these issues further and identify user-specific needs. These interviews revealed a preference for a system that went beyond simple scheduling (as offered by apps like Calendly) to include engagement features such as reflection, feedback, event tracking, and a resource library. An experienced user researcher also voiced concerns that the tutors may not be professionally trained to address students’ mental health concerns. This research led to the selection of a concept focusing on student-tutor engagement.

Ideation and Prototyping

To refine the concept, a paper prototype was developed, featuring key components such as user profiles, a resource library, session reflections, and a calendar for upcoming events. In validating the paper prototype with users, feedback affirmed the structure while suggesting improvements. For instance, users requested adding a target language function since it is a language tutoring app, enabling anonymous reflection submissions to coordinators, creating a chat function among tutors, students and coordinators, and adding the ability to navigate back to previous pages.

Usability Testing

A dynamic prototype was developed to incorporate these changes. Usability testing revealed that users were somewhat slow in identifying whether the app was primarily designed for students or tutors. To address this, it was suggested to rename "Student Reflection" to simply "Reflection," as the app targets students, and to rename "Resources Library" to "Tutors’ Feedback" or "Tutors’ Notes" for greater clarity.

Another issue was the placement of the messaging icon, as users noted that the top-right corner is commonly associated with settings. It was recommended to replace the messaging icon in that location with a settings icon that includes functions such as "Profile," "Language," and "Time Setting." The “messaging” function could be moved to the main menu.

Additionally, on the “Upcoming Events” page, it was proposed to introduce a shared calendar feature for tutors and students. This would allow students to schedule and reschedule tutoring sessions directly, resolving communication issues through email previously mentioned in problem space.

Addressing Usability Issues in the future

While the app's core functions are being finalized, future enhancements have been outlined to address usability issues identified during testing, such as reorganizing the homepage and adding a shared calendar function on the “events” page.

This iterative design process demonstrates our commitment to user-centered development, ensuring the app meets the specific needs of its target audience while addressing usability challenges in real-time.