✦ CASE STUDY
Class Catalyst — UX Research for K-12 Well-Being Platform
A semester-long collaboration with Class Catalyst, an EdTech platform that helps K-12 teachers support students' emotional well-being through daily check-ins. Our team conducted end-to-end UX research to identify pain points and propose improvements to the teacher and administrator dashboards.
My Role
UX Researcher — interview protocol design, survey planning, heuristic evaluation, and insight synthesis
Team
4 members · University of Michigan · SI 622: Needs Assessment & Usability Evaluation
Duration
Jan – Apr 2025
Methods
Interviews · Surveys · Heuristic Evaluation · Usability Testing · Comparative Analysis
Research Process
- 1. Interviews (n=4) — Teachers and administrators shared their daily experiences. We identified missing real-time alerts, limited customization, and lack of engagement tracking.
- 2. Surveys (n=5) — Piloted with educators; refined question neutrality and recommended scalable deployment.
- 3. Comparative Evaluation — Benchmarked against ClassDojo, Otus, Sown to Grow; found strengths in emotional check-ins but gaps in LMS integration.
- 4. Heuristic Evaluation — Applied Nielsen's 10 heuristics; discovered misleading notifications, unclear navigation, and uneditable replies.
- 5. Usability Testing (n=4) — Observed users via Zoom; identified confusion in analytics visuals and navigation flow.
Key Insights
- Teachers need real-time alerts for urgent student updates.
- Customization is key — teachers want to add their own check-in prompts.
- Analytics were hard to interpret and unreliable in displaying data trends.
- Navigation lacked clarity and consistency across dashboards.
Recommendations
- Redesign analytics for clearer data representation and interaction.
- Introduce customizable emotional prompts for flexibility.
- Implement real-time notifications for urgent alerts.
- Add breadcrumbs and clearer hierarchy to simplify navigation.
Impact & Reflection
Our findings were presented to Class Catalyst's product team as part of a formal research handoff. This experience strengthened my ability to turn qualitative data into actionable recommendations and taught me how to collaborate with real-world stakeholders in a research-driven process.