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EdTech | Byju’s Think n' Learn Pvt Ltd

Product Discovery for the Search QnA feature: driving product development with UX design/design thinking

My Role
 
  • PRODUCT MANAGER (EARLY CAREER) working closely with VP of Product
     
  • Owned Product discovery for the 'Learning & Personalization' team roadmap post acquisition
     
  • Managed Search feature development 
    & testing
Skills
  • Product discovery 
  • UX Research
  • UX Design
  • 0 -> 1 Product management
  • Product Testing
Collaborators
  • VP of Product
  • Senior Product Manager
  • VP of Tech
Project Overview
Forum - Byju's version
Following a series of acquisitions, a new division called Learning & Personalization was created with a focus on enhancing engagement at top of the product funnel as per the business need for the following year.
We leveraged human-centered design to create the roadmap. Based on previous success of Aristotle app’s Forum & Search features, we leveraged the users' desirability for a platform that instantly answers students’ doubts and questions.
Following IDEO's theory of change framework, the desired shifts were listed -
Apart from addressing the top of the funnel need, the Forum feature could also be leveraged to create social network effects to increase engagement and hence the business viability.

In terms of the technology feasibility, we leveraged already existing Aristotle app’s Search feature with AI capabilities of scanning books or handwritten text to search and Forum which provided the capability of posting questions onto a platform.
Lo-fi prototype user flow of Forum Byju's version
Card sort - Feature Prioritization
We presented our initial thinking to different stakeholders - VP of Product from Byju’s core learning app, Head of Sales, Chairman and Founder - and conducted a card sorting activity in order to be able to prioritize features and draft a roadmap.

The discussions led us to park the social network concept due to moderation challenges and instead with focussed on -
A straightforward Search experience where students would be able to enter doubts and receive solutions and recommendations to relevant content such as video lessons.
The engine bringing Search to life would involve being able to automatically recognize and tag questions entered by students in order to provide them the right responses. This would involve AI & LLMs that automate the tagging.
Although the articulation of this concept was unclear, it received enough interest from the stakeholders. From a UX perspective, I was able to incorporate aspects of gamification such as interactive puzzles into the experience.
Ask-a-doubt 
Following prioritization of feature characteristics, we pivoted from a Forum to a Byju’s version of Search: Ask-a-doubt. The feature strategy was defined by 3 possible versions of interactions.






Demo app screens -
Image search
Text search
Automatic Question tagging
Scenario 1: Exact Match
Scenario 2: Similar Match
Scenario 3: No Match
MVP Interaction Design
After validating the tech, we moved on to re-designing the interaction for Ask-a-doubt, this time with a focus on improving learning outcomes. A few design decisions that echoed this focus -
 
  • The Socratic method (a dialogue between teacher and students. The teacher leads by posing thought-provoking questions. Students actively engage by asking questions of their own) We applied the socratic method to create nested interactions with different layers of learning.
     
  • Instead of directly answering a student's query, we offer a 'key' - a crucial hint or insight that aids in resolving their doubt without fully explaining the concept, maintaining the spirit of inquiry and self-discovery.
     
  • ‘Solving steps’ is a second layer. This would allow the student to explore the layer of detail that they may be looking for.
     
  • Video lessons, proven to improve engagement and learning outcomes, would appear along with the solving steps.
     
  • Once the student reaches the final step, they are quizzed with a similar question. This would be gamified meaning students would earn points for solving the question. At the same time it wold help cement the new learning.
     
  • For questions that were based on memory and concept understanding, student would receive the answer in an interactive true/false format. 
Key
Videos + Solving steps
Nested explanations
Gamified experience
Interactive learning
Interactive learning
Development & Testing
With consensus on the UX design, we moved on to coordinating the UI design, front-end and back-end development. I used Jira to assign and track tasks.

Back end developers mostly worked on data management and retrieval. In order to streamline question tagging, a tutor-facing tool was designed and shipped.

I was also coordinating a test with the UX Research team to evaluate the feature’s impact on learning outcomes.

Post MVP

I departed from the company right after the MVP launch. Below is a web version of the step-by-step ‘Math Solver’ that is currently live.

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