GuruCool- A Tutor App
This assignment was given to us as part of our internship program at Procedure Technologies. In this case study, we will walk you through our overall process from inception to Hi-fidelity design!
A small lead into our brief! 🤌
As we all know, the education system throughout the world was severely impacted during and after the Pandemic and to add to that, at the same time, India announced and began implementing its new and updated National Education Policy, which had been in the works for 28 years, resulting in a significant education gap as the country was not prepared for a digitalised teaching based.
Even though schools were closed during this time, students were required to attend classes in order to pursue their education through various educational initiatives such as online classrooms, courses, and, most importantly, tutoring programmes.
The goal of this assignment was to:
- Recognize the magnitude of the increase in tutoring programmes during and after the pandemic.
- Determine if there was a void in locating the appropriate tutor or similar services.
- Create an app that will make it easier for tutors and students to discover each other and use these services.
But what’s in it for us?
- To gain a better understanding of this growing field and widen our horizons.
- To gain a better understanding of our job and the procedures involved, iterate, implement, and receive feedback.
- To find potential leads and rework them to favour our product in a way that’s a step ahead from the rest.
⁉️ How did we go about this project?
We followed the fundamental bases of empathise, define, ideate, and design alongside constant feedback loops.
⤵️ Here’s a lead into our problem space!
🤔 Secondary research
To have a deeper grasp of the area or subject, we began by gathering the relevant information from various online sources such as publications, news items, and research papers, and following that, we went on to conduct more specific surveys and user interviews.
Below are some of the insights we accumulated over the span of our research:
- In the aftermath of the pandemic, technology became the primary means of teaching education, and the Indian Edtech field saw a lot of activity in 2021.
- Indian Private Tuition market estimated to be at $16 billion in the year 2017 seems to be rapidly growing in order for students to further their academic success. It has seen growth at a staggering 30–35% in the last few years and was estimated to grow to $25 billion by the year 2020.
- According to ASSOCHAM’s survey, a whopping number of close to 87% of primary school children and up to 95% of the higher secondary attend private coaching classes.
- Over 86% of parents think that they are ill-equipped or lack time to teach their children on their own and here’s where coaching classes come in handy.
- The statistics reveal that middle-class parents have been spending 1/3rd of their monthly salary on their wards’ private tuitions.
- The market is divided into four vertices
- Classroom coaching,
- Small study groups,
- One-on-one home tuition,
- Online live/content-driven.
- Out of these, 97% is a physical or offline mode of tutoring.
- The online content and live tutoring business are pegged at just Rs.3500 crore in this 1.05 Lakh Crore industry.
For detailed insights: General Insights
🥊 Competitive Analysis
- In comparison to school-based teaching approaches, our competitors such as Vnaya, Fundoo Tutor, GharPeShiksha, etc have all been able to make the transition from offline to online far more smoothly.
- They’ve been able to apply a variety of approaches and tools, as well as make better use of/create resources.
- They provide disciplines ranging from school-based subjects to extracurricular activities such as coding, robotics, and entrance test preparation for exams such as the IELTS, JEE, NEET, and others.
- However, due to financial and technological constraints, the majority of them have been unable to make it accessible to everybody.
- In comparison to the tuitions they’d find in their area, they’re also harder to find and aren’t as credible or trustworthy.
- Although pre-recorded and live sessions are available, students find them to be distracting and less participatory.
For detailed insights: Competitive Analysis
🤝 Primary Research
We conducted primary research, which largely comprised of user interviews and surveys, to acquire firsthand and reliable information and corroborate our findings. We were only able to do it with roughly 20 people due to time constraints. Using these measures, we were able to find and verify the following insights:
💡 Pros for online tutoring:
- Convenient: saves time, can be attended at the comfort of their homes, gas money, and easy scheduling
- Good for emergency situations:
- In case the student needs classes urgently for a test or so, online tutoring can be opted for quite easily in comparison to in-person tutoring.
- Or if the student is unable to attend the class, recordings could be made available to them.
- More tutors to choose from
- Digital notes, are more accessible, and easier to maintain.
- Prompt results and feedback
- Global level peer-to-peer networking.
For detailed insights: Primary Research
💡 Cons to online tutoring:
- Requires discipline
- Unregulated Fee structure
- Depends on the subjects: Practical subjects are harder to grasp online than offline whereas theory-based subjects are better taught and learnt through online mediums.
- Could be more expensive: depends on the availability of resources and the tutor’s cost
- Limited Social Interaction: People started reaching out in various methods to have any social interaction at all as the first and second lockdown got people stuck at home for really long periods. For example: Studytogether, Studystream, etc
- Too many distractions
- Technical issues
Okay, but now what? Let’s ideate 💡
Now that we had a better understanding of the problem space, we began the quest for solving our problem. We did so by the means of the following steps:
We nailed down any idea, feature, or feeling we felt is relevant to solve our problem and create a product that’s beneficial.
- Brainstorming: We nailed down any idea, feature, or feeling we felt is relevant to solve our problem and create a product that’s beneficial.
2. MoSCoW Analyis: Since all our ideas cannot be incorporated in the first model of our product, we chose to segregate them on the basis of the MoSCoW (Must have, Should have, Could have, and Would have) analysis framework.
3. Userflow: We created a user flow to better understand and visualise the flow of our application. It lays out the main fundamental flow of our product.
🖊️ Let’s get the pen tool out!
After a week of crying, fussing, and hustling, we finally came up with a potential solution to the problem.
Introducing…
GuruCool stems from the word gurukula or gurukulam viz a type of education system in ancient India with shishya — students’ or ‘disciples’, living near or with the guru, in the same house. Here, we’re bringing them closer through the means of technology making learning accessible at all times.
As the name implies, is a private tutoring company that is “cooler” than the norm. “Cooler” how? Well, we believe that by changing the present structure, we can make tuition classes a lot more receptive, interesting, and accessible to all. Keeping our Indian roots in mind, the education system we had long before westernization and the aspect of us being a step ahead from our competitors by attempting to solve our users’ problems.
We aim to be different from our competitors by:
- Gamification of the classes to build interactivity.
- Accessibility-
- Breaking the language barrier
- Financially affordable plans
- Free education (RTE)
- Having credible tutors through constant student-parent feedback loops.
- Special attention towards weaker students through various different tried and tested methods.
Brand Tone
Since the company’s primary user is a student varying from age groups 6 to 18 years, we’ve tried to keep the overall tone and voice fun, exciting and friendly. The colors, icons, typography, and illustrations were chosen to indicate the same feeling.
Here’s a glimpse of our app 🤤
😥 Our challenges
- Time constraints and scheduling and management
- Lack of adequate knowledge to perform the processes
- Working through our creative differences
🎓 Our learnings
- Team management,
- How to work in a professional workspace,
- A better understanding of the various processes required to build a product,
- Documentation,
- Application of tools based knowledge,
- Iteration is key to creating better products!
🔐 Closing notes
We’d like to express our gratitude to our associates at Procedure Technologies for assisting us throughout the process and advising us on how to do better.
Overall, the project was difficult for us, but it taught us a lot about the ed-tech industry, the obstacles they’ve had and the benefits they’ve gained since the pandemic, how to work on problem statements with a team, and, most importantly, how to implement them. And a special thanks to our mentors Yugandhar Bhamare, Rachelsalunke, @kumar, and @smritigujaran for all that they do for us ❤
🪖 Our three-(wo)men army
- Aman Sharma
- Hariom Singh
- Yutika Pahuja
