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Enhanced revenue by 37.5% for DD Educational Center

My experience implementing new features for DD Educational Center, Sri Lanka’s leading educational center for Government Service Examination, with over 0.5 million users, helped to increase its revenue by 37.5%.

Project Deliverables
User Experience Report
User Interface (Mobile)
My Role
UI/UX Design
Project Manager
Wireframing and User Flows
Project Context
2023 February - 2 weeks
UI/UX Designer - NovaTechZone (Pvt) Ltd

Backstory

In 2023, during my tenure as a UI/UX designer at NovaTechZone (Pvt) Ltd in Sri Lanka, I had the privilege of working on a project for DD Educational Center, one of the largest educational centers for Government Service Examination preparation in the country. The platform comprised a mobile app for students and an admin panel web application for the business owners and educators to manage the overall operations. 

The student app served as a hub for students to register for live classes and engage with educators, while the admin panel web application handled tasks such as managing payments, classes, and other administrative duties. Through my initial research, I discovered that while the business had automated approximately 60% of its operations, it lacked some crucial features necessary for full automation.

Daminda Dissanayake the No 1 for education in Sri Lanka

The Problem

The main issue we discovered in the business process was that although Mr. Damina Dissanayaka, with his 30 years of experience in the educational sector, was successfully running the platform, there was a significant problem with student registration and payment for online classes. Despite approximately 700 students attending each live session, only about 500 students (about 70%) were actually registered and paid for the class. The remaining participants had not paid, but due to the high volume of students, it was difficult for the organizers to accurately filter out the unpaid students and restrict their access to the class.

Current course registering and payment process of the current DD app
This shows the steps for registering for courses and making payments using the current student mobile app.

Currently, the platform only accepts bank deposit payments for classes. Here’s how the class registration process works.

  1. Students register through the DD mobile app using their mobile number.
  2. They select the desired class they want to attend.
  3. Students register for the class, generating an order number.
  4.  After registration, students see the order number and bank payment details on the screen.
  5. They pay the specified amount to a designated bank account.
  6. Students send the payment slip to mentioned WhatsApp number.
  7. Admin users manually verify payments with the payment slips.
  8. Admin updates the student’s payment status from the admin panel.
  9. Students receive a SMS message containing the Zoom class credentials.

The problem arises because live class meeting credentials can be shared with anyone, regardless of whether they have paid for the class or not. This loophole leads to a high number of participants per session, even though the number of paid participants is low.

Tackling the Problem

We began with some brainstorming sessions to delve into the problem we aimed to solve and gathered initial thoughts on ‘How can we minimize the number of unpaid participants?’

To lay a solid foundation for our efforts, me and my team took a step back to define our objectives. We outlined key goals, emphasizing the importance of:

  • Streamlining the process of verifying class payments to reduce manual effort and time consumption.
  • Implementing measures to prevent or minimize the unauthorized sharing of Zoom meeting credentials.
  • Automating and reducing the manual processes within the business operations.

How can we make the mobile app serves as the central platform for students, offering seamless class registration, payment processing, and live class participation, all while ensuring that only authorized students can access the sessions only from student mobile app (not directly using Zoom app for live classes).

After numerous discussions and brainstorming sessions, we had a clear vision of what we aimed to accomplish with the system, enabling me to dive straight into the sketching phase.

Ideation

Based on the insights gathered from our initial analysis and discussions with the customer, I proceeded to sketch multiple iterations and low-fidelity wireframes for our proposed new features.
These are few of sketches I made based on our new discoveries.
After a few iterations with pen and paper, I finalized the general idea and transitioned to Figma for designing high-fidelity designs, as it offers greater flexibility for arranging elements and refining the details.

Design

Based on feedback from both customers and my team regarding my low-fidelity wireframes, I developed high-fidelity mockups using Figma.
Hi Fidelity designs for developer handoff
After a few iterations with pen and paper, I finalized the general idea and transitioned to Figma for designing high-fidelity designs, as it offers greater flexibility for arranging elements and refining the details.

Home Screen for improved customer accessibility.

Home Screen of old DD App & improved user friendly Home Screen
Home screen of the old DD app and improved user friendly home screen

Course details screen.

Old home screen improved for eay and eye catching desing
Course details screen of the old DD app and improved screen
In the current app, the course details lack clarity and fail to highlight any discounts or offers, which could improve conversion rates. I’ve enhanced the course details screen to present a clearer and simpler version. Important course details are now easily scannable, and the offer, along with the Call To Action buttons, has been prominently displayed to motivate users to purchase the course. The offer is clearly showcased, demonstrating how much users can save if they purchase the course now. This creates a sense of urgency and leads to an increase in conversion rates.

Register & make payment for course.

Registering & make payment for course in the old DD app(1)
Manual instructions for course registration and payment in old app

In the old app, students had to deposit the course fee into a bank account, with the bank account details provided on the screen. After making the deposit, they were required to write the order number on the slip and send an image of the slip to the WhatsApp number displayed on the app screen.

Upon receiving the image, admins manually checked the payment slips and approved the class for the student from the admin panel web application. Once the class was activated, a SMS message containing the Zoom meeting credentials was sent to the student, who could then join the class using these credentials.

We have now replaced this almost manual process with the following payment automation.

Registering to course in old app
Course registration and payment automation in the new app
As a solution to one of the identified problems, we have automated the course registration and payment process. Students can now pay for courses via online payment through the app. Upon successful online payment, students will be automatically registered for the course. With this new update, the manual payment validation process can be removed. Additionally, Zoom meeting credentials will no longer be sent via SMS. Once students are registered, the course will appear on their course screen, allowing them to directly join the live class from there. This eliminates the need for sharing Zoom credentials.

Join to live zoom class.

Accessing to the live classes from the new DD app
Zoom class feature incorporate to the app
Registered classes are displayed on the “My Course” screen. When a class is about to start, the “Join Live Class” button is automatically enabled (also student will receive a notification message about the class), allowing students to join the live class with a simple press. Zoom meetings launch seamlessly within the app, eliminating the need for students to leave the mobile app. With this feature, Zoom class credentials are not shared via SMS, ensuring security. Only those who have made payment and registered can access the live classes, preventing unauthorized sharing of credentials.

Prototype

Creating a high-fidelity prototype based on my mockups was a significant milestone for me. It allowed the QA team, dev team and the client to interact with my design realistically and provide feedback.

DD app prototype
Here shows only the main featueres of the new app
After our QA team approved the new features, we conducted a final meeting and presented the prototype of the new app to the customer. The customer was highly impressed and gave approval for development. Following this, I collaborated with the mobile app development team to develop the new DD Educational Center student app.

The Impact

After developing the new features within two weeks, we published the Android and Apple iOS apps to their respective app stores. Following the launch of the new version of the DD App, we conducted research to evaluate its outcome.

Here are the approximate data we gathered from the customer in the last month (2023 – March) before launching the new app (rounded figures for simplicity, and using “X” for revenue generated).

Number of courses conducted on March16
Number of students registered for courses (approx. 400 for a course)6,400
Number of students attended to the live classes (approx. 600 for a course)9,600
Total revenue generated from the coursesLKR X

After analyzing the data of the new app for the month following the release of the new version, our findings were amazing. 

Number of courses conducted on April16
Number of students registered for courses (approx. 550 for a course)8,800
Number of students attended to the live classes (approx. 550 for a course)8,800
Total revenue generated from the coursesLKR Y
Impact of the new app to the business

The success

On launch day, the new feature worked amazingly well, saving a lot of time that was previously wasted on manual tasks like verifying payments and checking paid students. Before the feature was launched, there were just over 6,000 paid course registrations every month. After 30 days of the launch, this number increased to nearly 8,800. In the first month alone, there were more than 2,400 new paid course registrations, and active learner engagement increased by 50%. Additionally, the revenue generated in the first month increased by 37.5%.

Achieved goals through our process

  • Eliminated unauthorized access to live classes, achieving a 0% rate.
  • Automated the payment process, significantly reducing time wastage.
  • Increased the revenue of the business by 37.5%.
DD-new-mobile-app-launching

Have any questions about this project?
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