Supply Rabbit
Supply Rabbit App
Teachers have been paying for school supplies to optimize their student’s learning experience and it’s become a standard. The Department of Education reported in 2019 that teachers reported spending $479 of their own money on average each year. Supply Rabbit App allows you to help your local teachers by fulfilling their school supply wishlist. The teachers can list school supplies reflecting a wide price range and every donation helps the teacher by relieving them of the pressure to spend their own money. Providing teachers with the right tools directly impacts the student and allows the teacher to focus on other responsibilities such as lesson planning, meeting parents, and teaching.
Role: Team:
UX Researcher and UX Designer UX Designer - Lucia Z., Kimberly E., & Gina Kong
UX Researcher - Gina Kong
Tech:
Adobe XD, Miro, and Zoom
Duration:
Two weeks
The Challenge
Design an app that turns personal values into actions that have a measurable benefit to the community
The Solution
Developed a concept using technology for teachers that provides a
solution that meets their school supply needs
THE PROBLEM
How can teachers receive school supplies without spending their own money ?
School supplies are vital to the learning experience for students. Students in elementary schools often engage in active learning with arts and crafts. These supplies are needed to ensure that students are able to participate in learning. Public schools are limited in their resources and teachers do not receive the additional funding needed to create interactive lessons for their students.
Fortunately, donations are made directly to schools and young learners to ensure every student receives an equal opportunity to learn. These donations relieve the teachers that normally purchase supplies using their own hard earn money. Teachers can instead focus on making lesson plans without the limitation of supplies and look forward to meeting parents to discuss their student’s progress.
Ultimately, the problem is that teachers need specific items for their classrooms and there is an opportunity to know what to purchase and which classroom received it. Within this core problem we identified three essential user needs:
1. Donations can’t be tracked. After donations have been made, its challenging to know what school, teacher, and student benefited from your donations.
2. All donations are anonymous. Donations are made anonymously because there isn’t a way to register who donated what item. It no longer gives teachers and students an opportunity to thank their donor and show gratitude.
3. School supply needs aren’t clearly listed. Specific items needed by students and teachers aren’t usually listed. As a result, shoppers sometime make purchases blindly and hope that their donation will be utilized.
THE OPPORTUNITY
Around 94% of public school teachers report spending their own money on school supplies.
Source: Department of Education 2019 Report
THE SOLUTION
Find teachers by location or name. Determine the price range for your donation and review the school supplies on the teacher’s wishlist. Purchases made from the app will be sent to the teacher’s classroom.
Meet our teacher, Mrs. Smith
Before Supply Rabbit App
Mrs. Smith teaches 3rd grade at Baker Elementary School in San Mateo, California. She loves thinking of creative ways to teach her students and enjoys finding ways to get her class involved on hands-on projects. Classroom supplies can come at a cost and Mrs. Smith feels challenged due to her limited resources.
After Supply Rabbit App
Mrs. Smith feels thankful for the generous donations from her community. She is able to focus on lesson planning and teaching. Mrs. Smith was concerned for some of her students because not everyone could afford new school supplies, but now she is confident all her students will be in a position to succeed.
Understand our users
Who uses Supply Rabbit App?
We had two groups of users: teachers and donors. We based our personas off our one-on-one interviews and survey results with both groups.
Linda (donor)
Linda is a grandmother to 5 beautiful grandchildren. Linda is retired from the corporate world and volunteers occasionally, but she wants to find other ways to contribute to her community. Linda feels comfortable around technology and she cares deeply about her grandchildren. Its important to her that they have a positive learning experience in school.
Crystal (teacher)
Crystal works as a middle school teacher. She’s married and does not have children of her own, but is an aunt to her nephews and nieces. Crystal is tech savvy and often uses her phone to make purchases. She’s developed a great relationship with her young nephews and nieces and believes it is important for students to have access to school supplies.
Individual Interviews
After brainstorming methods of research, we decided to conduct 30 minute individual interviews with donors. The structure of the interview looked like this:
1 Get acquainted with the users
Age? Occupation? Where are you from?
2 Motivations for using Supply Rabbit
Why are you interested in donating school supplies?
3 Analyzing the user journey & flow
Can you tell me about a time where you donated and how it made you feel? Could you
show me your screen and show me how you interact with Supply Rabbit App?
4 Product review
What features did you like about Supply Rabbit? What features would you change?
Affinity Mapping
After conducting interviews, we gathered the insights and created an affinity diagram. We collected the data by writing down the findings onto a virtual post-its and started brainstorming.
We reorganized the diagram by consolidating repeating ideas and categorizing them to look for themes. After discussing the categories and reviewing the post-its, we voted on key features by adding green stickers.
Opportunities to follow our user
We learned from our users their typical shopping journey. They shared insights about their experiences.
It showed us where Supply Rabbit App had an opportunity to relieve frustrations and improve their donation experience. Pain points in our user journey included:
Doubt and hesitation when making a purchase because of the uncertainty of what to buy
Feeling overwhelmed when browsing the school supply section because of multitude of options
Frustrated that the donations cant be made to a particular school or classroom because there isn’t an option to specify
Curious if the donations were received and wanted to know what school or student benefited from the donations
Visualizing features through sketching
We made rough sketches based off of the key information from our affinity diagram. Our sketches captured the features that were notable from our interviews. I’ve included my sketch below:
Final Mockup
