ThirdRoom
Creating a web onboarding journey to seamlessly match STEM experts with teachers, igniting rural student passion for joining the field.
Overview
As a means to inspire high school students to pursue STEM careers, my client enlisted my help in improving the connection process between teachers and STEM professionals.
The result? A seamless web onboarding experience designed to pair STEM experts with educators, ultimately boosting student interest and involvement in STEM pathways.
Client
ThirdRoom
Team
x1 UX Researchers
x1 UX Designer
x1 UX Writer
Scope of my work
Research
Interviews
Interaction Design
Visual Design
Testing
My Deliverables
Research Plan
Interview Scripts
User Journey Maps
Site Maps
Sketches
Low-fi mockup
High-fi mockup
Prototypes
The business needs and user needs were starkly mismatched
Early in the program, our client's attempt to quickly integrate STEM professionals into classrooms led to random matches between teachers and experts, resulting in awkward student interactions.​
Changing something was crucial; otherwise, teacher participation in the program would keep declining!
What challenges does this project present?
How to improve teacher-STEM professional matches?
How can we ensure students engage better with experts?
What's the optimal medium for crafting this experience?
Initial thoughts on the issue
In our initial client meeting, we assumed that the program lacked teacher autonomy as they couldn't choose their STEM experts.
Upon reaching this point, we began contemplating ideas that would:
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Gather Teacher Needs and their Student needs
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Utilize collected data for STEM Expert Recommendations
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Allow teachers to choose STEM experts.
Yet it was imperative to hear teachers’ perspectives first!
Educators desire the freedom to choose
We interviewed 6 teachers and found that the program prioritized curriculum over expert journeys in matching. As a result, teachers expressed interest in understanding each expert's life background before matching, to foster a connection with students.
Here are some key interview findings:
Not Working
Working
Selecting medium for this experience
To address pain points, we visualized the emotional and program journey teachers faced in 2020.
This guided our decision to implement an onboarding process that collects both teacher and student needs, empowering teachers to choose STEM experts aligned with their classroom requirements.
Wait, did we really use dating apps to inspire our onboarding methods?
We were certain they excelled in collecting users' backgrounds to pair them with compatible individuals. For this, we examined 7 dating and other platforms. We concentrated on understanding what makes an efficient onboarding process.
Here's a glimpse of some of the competitors we researched for this project.
In summary, we outlined key elements of a great onboarding experience
Organizing data for user engagement?
We've organized our onboarding questions into three key sections to optimize the matching process.
Students
Tell us more about your students. Interest, background, what resonates with them?
Teachers:
What exposure do you want for your students? Current events or career pathways?
Professionals:

Specify what qualities would work in your classroom? Personal stories, activities?
Coming up with initial designs
Inspired by competitor research and the site map, the team created sketches, low-fidelity and high-fidelity mockups.
We emphasized:
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Question hierarchy
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Minimal steps
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Sample copy
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User-friendly UI
Testing phase
Uncovering design insights across two testing phases
We A/B tested to find the best category display: accordion or tabular design. The second test evaluated onboarding flow efficiency, direction clarity, and question relevance to teachers' needs via moderated evaluation testing.
A/B Testing
Accordion design
Tabular design
Facilitated Prototype Evaluation
Making changes based on teachers' input
Final designs
Ready to Supercharge Your Students?
Let Us Pair You with the Perfect STEM Ambassador
Outcomes
6 months post-implementation of our solutions, we've analyzed program adoption metrics and surveys to define key outcomes. Here are a few:
What’s next
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Improve STEM suggestion matches towards teachers.
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Improve STEM professional's onboarding section, based on upcoming research and interviews.
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Incorporate a calendar feature for availability.
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Test new Iterations.
Project lessons
Prepare Thoroughly for Setbacks and Constraints
During research, many teachers canceled last-minute interviews due to busy schedules, requiring frequent adaptations and impacting timelines. Proactive planning for setbacks can save time in the future.
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Highlight the Significance of the UX Process from the Start!
In this project, stakeholders demanded quick results, which led to repetitive scoping discussions. This limited our ability to interview STEM professionals, despite achieving positive outcomes. We aimed to gather more input from the STEM community. ​