Key Personas for an educational reformative
It is for a Chennai based startup, that is leading a fundamental reform in school education through its transformational programme and challenges mediocre practices in the Indian educational ecosystem. This program has been widely accepted by 2000+ schools, and have been taught in 25000+ classrooms, for 1M+ students.
Client encountered challenges when it came to renewing annual contracts with schools.
While new schools embraced the said programme, there were also consistent departures.
There was also lack of commitment from teachers to enhancing their skills. Wasn't sure
if schools will resist the new assessment model they were planning to introduce.
After an extensive study, we crafted eight (8) comprehensive personas for 4 different
user groups, encapsulating the pain points, obstacles, strengths, needs, and preferences
of each group.
The client received these personas positively, finding them instrumental in
aligning their priorities with the personas' requirements. This exercise not only guided
content and feature prioritization but also facilitated a shared understanding within
the team about the end users they were catering to.
In my role as the research lead, I collaborated with a group of stakeholders to define the primary research objectives.
- Gain insights into the obstacles and difficulties experienced by teachers, students, parents, and the school.
- Assess the effectiveness of the 'Continuous Evolution and Training' program.
- Validate the recently introduced assessment model.
Given the emphasis on comprehending user behaviors and the factors that impact school management's decisions, we reached a consensus to create well-defined personas that could be applied across various functions for future endeavors. The end deliverables consist of meticulously crafted personas
- Decided to do in-person user research with the real users, in their natural environments, engaging in face-to-face conversations to gain insights into the expectations and challenges. We wanted to capture the contextual factors, such as environmental conditions, social dynamics, and physical constraints, that influence users' behavior and preferences, often expressed non-verbally.
- Finalised the research crew - 3 seasoned , 3 juniors and a research lead myself
- Finalised locations, user groups, and the sample size.
- Created a concrete protocol to guide researchers, ensuring that the study is conducted in a
systematic, unbiased and transparent manner.
- Informed consent form, ethical guidelines, data collection and protection (video, audio, observation, etc.,)
We collected all the data over a google sheet, from different locations. All of us pooled our
findings, intentionally steering clear of categorization to prevent any personal biases and kept
it completely open. After our field work, we gatehred together, and had lively and constructive
debates, all leading to a fascinating affinity mapping session.
The analysis phase was quite the marathon, spanning over a week, but it ultimately resulted in
the creation of comprehensive personas and ecosystems that had solutions for every question on
the client's mind.
Some of the findings were nothing short of remarkable, and wouldn't refrain from claiming that
those wouldn't have happened without our deep-dive research.
As always, our journey was packed with valuable lessons. One significant challenge that stood out was the language barrier, given that our study spanned various languages and cultures. It became evident that language proficiency alone doesn't equate to a deep understanding of culture, traditions, values, and beliefs. While it's not always straightforward, we recognized the importance of involving researchers from the same or similar cultural background or having a cultural companion, as it could have made a substantial difference.
