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How can we help users turn data into action?

A case study to optimise how working parents access and analyse their child’s learning progress in Atom Learning's exam prep dashboard.

Company

Atom Learning

Role

Lead Designer

Area

Dashboard, Data Visualisation

Background

Working parents across the UK have trusted Atom Learning to help their Y5-Y6 children prepare for the 11+ exam. To support them, we created a dashboard to track progress and keep their exam prep on course. But parents found the old dashboard confusing and frustrating, and it just wasn’t cutting it.

To top it off, the bounce rate (sessions without conversions) were more than 60%!

Old dashboard (1)

Old dashboard (2)

Old structure with a tab for each subject.

Knowing the user

Why is this happening? To understand the issue better, I needed to talk to our users and get a sense of what needs are we not meeting there. Here's the demographic of our users.

User demographic.

What did they say?

I invited 10 of them for an interview, only 5 of them showed up, knowing they're busy parents, we learned to live with it. Here's what they said below, along with the summary.

Interview responses

Key comments from parents.

How they think, driven by their wants and fears.

Sketching for solutions

Based on what they said and their profile, I prioritised the problem space to three items:

Long term progress: How may we assure parents that their child will do well in the exam?
Short term progress: How may we better show the child’s incremental progress?
Exam prep plan: How may we communicate the exam prep plan better?

Based on what they said and their profile, I prioritised the problem space to three items:

Long term progress: How may we assure parents that their child will do well in the exam?
Short term progress: How may we better show the child’s incremental progress?
Exam prep plan: How may we communicate the exam prep plan better?

Based on what they said and their profile, I prioritised the problem space to three items:

Long term progress: How may we assure parents that their child will do well in the exam?
Short term progress: How may we better show the child’s incremental progress?
Exam prep plan: How may we communicate the exam prep plan better?

The aligned upon direction.

Validation with MVP

To validate this strategy, I started with enabling the most impactful feature with as low effort as possible. The long term progress tracker is the crux of this update.

Parents in our focus group noticed it and started asking important questions: "How does Atom know if my child is on track? What data does it use to measure it?"

Which we are happy to announce it's coming up next!

To validate this strategy, I started with enabling the most impactful feature with as low effort as possible. The long term progress tracker is the crux of this update.

Parents in our focus group noticed it and started asking important questions: "How does Atom know if my child is on track? What data does it use to measure it?"

Which we are happy to announce it's coming up next!

To validate this strategy, I started with enabling the most impactful feature with as low effort as possible. The long term progress tracker is the crux of this update.

Parents in our focus group noticed it and started asking important questions: "How does Atom know if my child is on track? What data does it use to measure it?"

Which we are happy to announce it's coming up next!

MVP to validate the strategy.

The new dashboard structure.

Iterate, iterate, iterate!

It's time for the rest of the building blocks:

The exam prep plan page
Topic Coverage and Mastery Points
The weekly activities

The finished dashboard look.

The exam prep plan, always accessible.

7 days chart (default).

Yesterday and today chart.

Keeping it responsive.

Challenges and compromises

Data tracking.

The bulk of data that were available to us were mostly business metrics as our data engineering team was stretched thin. We had to resort to rely heavily on qualitative feedback from our parent focus groups and past research documentations.

Integration with B2B dashboard for schools.

I worked very closely with our B2B dashboard team to understand our shared constraints and how it would influence the data we could show. (example: our charts were all made with Highcharts modules to expedite the effort)

Our B2B School dashboard.

Measuring success

Fast forward a few months later when I was already working on another project, the lowered number of unsubscriptions contributed to 10% product revenue growth as it were well received among parents in our focus groups. As for the next steps, I would closely monitor these metrics to decide on them.

Short term:

Free trial conversion as users can now see its value
Number of exercises done per student
User retention
Bounce rate

Long term:

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), as the more parents find the tool useful, the less likely they unsubscribe after their annual subscription expires
Average Topic Coverage and Mastery Points per student