Design an app for parents to track their child's performance in school.

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Design an app for parents to track their child's performance in school.

Asked at Google over a year ago

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Viktoria Uskova · Answer 1 · 2023-04-25T19:42:41+0000

Clarification

Is this app a standalone project or a part of a bigger school management system? - Standalone.
Is there any specific market we are targeting in terms of location, student age, schools, etc? - No.
Are there any budget limits or other constraints I should consider? - No

Select user group

In this case we have two user groups:

parents as our target audience
teachers (schools) as the second group of users

Parents´ JTBD (general):

When I want to know how my child is doing at school

I want to have a quick and easy access to all the information

in a simple and clear way

Teachers (schools) have their own ways to track Ss performance via a classroom management system or on paper. We don´t want to create extra work for teachers or rely on them to fill in any extra forms or information.

So to start with we will work with the schools that already have digital performance tracking. However, most likely all these systems have their own access for parents as well. Which means we will need to conduct a proper market research and check our USPs.

We will need to connect by API to the schools´ management system. There is a limited number of the solutions on the market and we will start with the one that´s most widely used.

Needs

Here are several JTBD that we might take into consideration:

1. General:

When I want to know how my child is doing at school

I want to have a quick and easy access to all the information

in a simple and clear way

2. Alert:

I am not really interested in my child´s performance,

but I want to know when something goes wrong

so that I can take measures

3. Engaged / concerned:

I am very interested in my child´s performance,

but I don´t want to seem controlling or bother my chld with constant questions,

so I want to be able to check the information without them knowing

4. Controlling:

My child doesn´t study well at school and they try to hide it,

so when I want to know the truth, I want to have quick access and be sure in the information that I see and demonstrate to them that I can easily check it out.

5. Progress:

I hired a tutor for my child, and I want to make sure that these extra classes are paying off, so I want to see the progress

6. Goal oriented:

My child is going to enter this specific university and I only care about how well they do at these particular subjects. I don´t really care about other subjects.

Solutions

Taking into consideration all these JTBD scenarios and parents´ constant lack of time, I suggest we create a simple and a very easy to use app. It will reflect the data that the parents are interested in in a form of a simple dashboard.

We will start with a short series of questions that will allow us to define the type of the parent and what information they want to track.

Depending on the answers, we will show them one of the following dashboards:

The "Standard" view will show a table of Subject - Last 10 marks - average score.

The "Focus" view will only have certain subjects.

The "Full" view will give access to all the details during this term.

The "Alert" mode will only send notifications when the student is getting a bad mark.

This app is going to be free for both parents and schools. We will earn money on ads and commissions.

For example, if a student failed an exam, we can reccommend one-on-one classes with a teacher to work on this topic.

We can also add bonuses for "good" performance: if a student is doing well, their parents have access to special bonuses and discounts for various types of entertainment: cinema, bowling, pizza, etc. As well as various goods and services.

Also, we can reccommend universities and colleges based on the student´s performance, and help entering these educational institutions.

To sum up, we are aiming to a very user-friendly app for busy parents which will allow them to get access to the data they want to know about their child´s performance. We will use the existing classroom management solutions to reflect this data. We will partner will various companies to monetize the app.

srinatar · Answer 2 · 2023-04-15T18:10:02+0000

Clarifying Questions:

1. Can I assume I am a PM at a startup launching a new product to solve this problem space? - Sure.

2. education system is widely different across the world. For example, grading and evaluation rubric is highly nation-specific. Given this constraint, can I focus on the US market segment for this exercise? - Yes.

3. are we focusing on a specific K12 or kids in community/colleges? - focus on K12 (elementary, middle, high)

4. Any timeline or other constraints I need to consider while designing this product? - No

Mission - enable to parents to help kids achieve their best academic performance potential during their K12 years.

Goal - Considering that i am a PM at a startup solving this problem space, I want to focus on user acquisition and product adoption as my top goal. does this look reasonable to you?

user groups

1. kids -> elementary/middle vs high schoolers. for high schoolers, these grades are life changing (helps them get into a 4-year degree program vs community school). so, i want to focus on high school kids.

2. teachers -> focused on giving kids the support and education

3. parents -> why do parents want to track

-> support kids in their education

-> find out how kids are doing competitively.

-> provide a competitive edge.

i can segment the parents into a 2x2 matrix

a) not deeply interested in kids education + familiar with US school system

b) not deeply interested in kids education + unfamiliar with the US school system

c) deeply interested in kids education + familiar with US school system ->

this segment is a great fit for our product. however, they might not be truly underserved. they might be able to make sense of the grade reports or other emails that school sends them.

we should target this segment as adjacent market once we address our core segment.

d) deeply interested in kids education + unfamiliar with the US school system -> this could be immigrant parents

-> i will focus on this segment as this segment is the most underserved and also growing segment. focusing on this segment will help us achieve our goal. (of acquiring users)

pain points

1. as an immigrant parent, i do not quite understand what these grades mean, and how well the kid is doing over the year and what contributed to the current grade and what can i do to improve the grade? (P1 -> high impact, common problem statement)

2. as an immigrant parent, i want to track the grades to see how well does my kid perform at the national and international level -> P1 (high impact, no substitute)

3. as an immigrant parent, I want to offer additional competitive edge -> have high willingness to pay potential . we can expand on this

4. other problem statements:

my kids don't share.
my school doesn't send useful emails.
can't find time to read and understand the grade emails that i get
i do not know how to help my kids when he / she gets C in her US history

solution

send an easy to understand email to parents with specific call to action on what they could do on their kids education and what you can to help improve them.
1. kids got B. what factors contributed to it (assignments, performance,)
2. what to focus on to improve.
3. prioritization - easy to implement, but parents might not see them and hard to see if it drives impact.
(mobile app) kids and parents can create their profiles.
1. parents view has a summary of the current teacher's feedback on assignments, class participation, and quizzes. we will provide a trend line of how the kid is doing and areas where kids need help -> low effort, high impact (P1)
2. parents can get a summary notification or assign responsibilities for kids. -> high effort, medium impact.
3. parents can information around free and paid tutors while viewing their kids grade so parents can easily take the next steps and support kids development. -> low effort, high impact. (P2)
4. prioritization - easy to build and expand, position this app as part of the kids school onboarding. land and expand approach.

summary

solve the problem for parents to track their grade.
we focused on parents who are quite focused on their kids edcuation and not fully familiar with US education system. (eg: immigrant parents)
key problem we identified is the following
1. I, as an immigrant parent, i do not quite understand what these grades mean, and how well the kid is doing over the year and what contributed to the current grade and what can i do to improve the grade? (P1 -> high impact, common problem statement)
solution
1. we will build a mobile app so that parents view in the app has a summary of the current teacher's feedback on assignments, class participation, and quizzes.
2. we will provide a trend line of how the kid is doing and areas where kids need help -> low effort, high impact (P1)

other comments:

grades are a lagging indicator. most schools have a classroom performance, quality of submissions in assignments, quizzes are leading indicator.

integrate with school system
detect kids academic performance and predict their grades
compare their grades to other schools in their neighborhood (and across the country)