How might we help teachers feel recognized and rewarded through perks?

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Perked seeks to raise the bar for teacher appreciation.

Based on our initial conversations with the COO and CEO, we decided to interview teachers as our users to find out more about their thoughts, feelings and mental models when it comes to redeeming perks. The interviews helped us understand the context for teachers as we designed the product and its features.

The questions we asked during the interview were divided into 3 categories- about teaching, teaching at their school and perks. The questions were left ambiguous and open ended in order to help teachers tell a story about their process. Through the interviews we were able to gain insights between a teacher’s everyday, their motivations and pain points.

TEACHER INSIGHTS

Teachers want to be recognized. They feel like they have not received enough recognition for the work they do.There are different ways in which teachers would like to be recognized - verbal appreciation, promotion, tangible (perks) and intangible (time) incentives.They also want to feel like they have some agency when it comes to making decisions about their perks and day. Since most of a teachers day is tied up in work, they want to be able to feel in control of some parts of it. Teachers are also tired of perks that are expensive and difficult to find. They want perks that can be easily accessed through a 'not so confusing' - website and can be used everyday.

PERSONA

We developed a persona to highlight the needs, pain points and goals of our target users backed by the key insights from our user research .

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OUR SOLUTION

- We focused on developing features that were based on our research - promoting teacher recognition, agency, and making perks more accessible.

- We wanted to use language and voice on the screen acknowledges the hard work teachers do

- Giving teacher a sense of control and agency by setting up teacher preferences on the profile page

Messaging appreciation and gratitude trough the website

Designing with clean UI and colors to make website approachable

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LEARNING

Through two rounds of usability testing, where we tested time on task and gathered qualitative data about the look and feel of the website- we were able to confirm that the dashboard was intuitive and was considered easy and approachable.

Admin flow research and development: Through our research we recognized that the teacher-admin relationship determines the formers interaction with the perks provider. This makes it critical for more research and development of the administrative profile for the product.

Teacher Profile Personalization:In order to make teachers feel like they have more agency in the perks they receive- the teacher profile section could include data collection for their preferences. This data can then help filter and personalize content/offers for the teachers.

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