AI-driven experience decreases user workload by 70%

WEB RESPONSIVE AND APP

Company: Estante Mágica (B2B2C Edtech)

Role: UX researcher | UX/UI designer

Team: along with 6 devs

Overview


Estante Mágica brings classroom stories to life.
Teachers, our users, implement Estante Mágica project in their classrooms, allowing each child to create their own stories. They upload the children's contents in our platform. Estante Mágica transforms them into various products. The main one is the printed book, acquired by parents and delivered in school for a Book Signing Event.

Problem

The workload of editing, and reviewing each child's content was the main reason for churn.

Goals

Simplify the editing and reviewing of students' stories for teachers.

Results

AI integration resulted in:
1) 70% reduction in workload.
2) Antecipated 45% decrease in churn.

The Book Signing Event is a proud moment.

But to get there, teachers had a 
lot of previous work.

Process


Discovery

“This is so much work!!
I lost my entire weekend 
typing each child's text!”

Eliana, teacher

We contact each user who experiences churn to uncover the underlying reasons. The top 3 factors contributing to churn are:

71.2%

Time and effort 
constraints

Users’ Taskflow

Marcia, school manager

The scholars’ peak of joy and pride arrives during the book delivery at a book signing event. 
However, the journey leading up to it is filled with hard work and stress, often leaving users feeling frustrated.

For the majority of teachers who completed our project, as well as those who left, ensuring a perfect book was a laborious process.

User Research


Churn Report

“I had to ask my family to help me review the books. 
Yet some errors slip through.”

The book is a representation
 of teachers' work in the classroom.


The book is a source
 of pride
for teachers.

Departures due to resignations, health, etc

The Book Signing event has a
comercial purpose for schools

Consequently:

1- Teachers express concerns about how schools and parents might react to any errors in the book.

2- Teachers often find themselves working overtime to complete typing and reviewing tasks.

3- Teachers often seek external assistance to ensure the book is error-free

Secondary Research:


Engagement with other schools projects

Interview and Survey

As part of our ongoing commitment to discovery, we maintain regular contact with current users, with different profile:

  • from private and public schools

  • new and old users

  • from high touch and low touch experience

Key Takeaways

US$

25,150

annual salary

15.1%

UP TO

525

students/teacher

5.1%

Teachers in Brazil are undervalued and overworked.

UP TO

60

weekly work hours

How to ensure an error-free book with minimal teacher effort?

Design

AI Democratization

In late 2022, advanced AI models were widely adopted, enhancing content editing and reviewing. 
We crafted an AI-powered experience to reduce teachers' workloads on our platform.

Instead of typing each child story

Instead asking for help to review


Objectives:

  • User behavior concerning the new features: speech-to-text and AI-review

  • Comprehensibility of the workflow

  • Gauge the perceived value generated by these additions

AI Testing and Analysis

We conducted various tests and created different prompts to assess how OpenAI would behave in different usage contexts

Speech-to-text

  • Utilized in noisy environments.

  • Children dictating stories.

  • Proficiency in diverse languages.

Key takeaways

WhatsApp

  • Record or type.

  • Listen to your own recording.

  • Accept or discard text/recordings.

Key takeaways:

They could use Open-AI supported speech-to-text

Open-AI would review the children story

AI-powered review

  • Provided appropriate suggestion.

  • Ensured syntax and grammar align with the chosen language.

Cost

  • Simulated usage for monitoring recording and/or review request quantities.

Calculator to estimate book creation cost, prompts to train AI, and speech-to-text testing environment

  • Achieving 100% accuracy proved unattainable.

  • Speech-to-text accuracy approached nearly 100%,

  • Reviewing process presented specific challenges.

  • Nonetheless, it reached a level of satisfaction that enhanced our overall confidence in the experience.

Design Process



Speech-to-text for Usability test

Design for Usability Test

Grammarly

  • Offers correction suggestions

  • Allows accept or discard suggestions.

  • Provides an option for giving feedback.

The speech-to-text feature was clearly a tool to ease teachers’ workload.

But the AI-supported review brings some considerations, such as:
The typing process already includes an autocorrector.
Teachers should distinguish between autocorrector in typing and AI review.


I aimed to design an experience that would be both user-friendly and familiar to teachers. As a result, I drew inspiration from WhatsApp for the speech-to-text feature and from Grammarly for the review process.

Inspiration


autocorrector in typing experience

AI-review suggestion cards

It's essential that teachers take ownership of the editing process.
Teachers must have the autonomy to determine what needs correction.

Popup pre-review, explaining the one-time use

Usability test

The usage behavior (where and when to click) was confirmed during validation.

Speech-to-text was universally understood and well-received.

Clear understanding of the review environment

At first, they were concerned about how much AI would change the child style

But they had a positive response to it being a suggestion rather than a replacement.

Initial oversight of the trash icon.

Because of our expected cost, we first limit the AI-review use by 1 time.

Delivery

Final version improvements and insights



AI review


Cost monitoring

Initially, limiting usage to one attempt in the test wasn't a problem. However, we opted to grant teachers greater flexibility by offering unlimited AI reviews.
We accomplished this through a request tracking dashboard for both speech-to-text and AI review.


Speech-to-text

AI Accuracy and User Transparency

Our AI may not be 100% accurate, so we've added a learning notice and a feedback feature. Additionally, we removed 'accept all suggestions' to encourage users to review each suggestion for accuracy.


Encouraging New Feature Adoption

Users often approach new AI experiences with fear.
We introduced pop-up notifications highlighting our latest speech-to-text and AI review features


Emphasizing the AI work in review process

We've introduced a pre-review loading screen to underscore the active AI assistance throughout the review process. 
It also serves as a visual indicator, ensuring users are aware of AI assistance before proceeding with their review.

Results


Through testing and feedback, we can confidently state that there has been a substantial 70% reduction in workload.
Consequently, we are anticipating a 45% decrease in the churn rate.

Numbers so far*

Despite the high level of usage, our request volumes and associated costs remain below our initial projections. 

This underscores the seamless and dependable nature of the experience.

Speech-to-text

115,737

Stories
dictated

750,619

Requests
so far

AI review

131,205

AI-reviewed books

More CONFIDENT
teachers

The AI assistance was the best
thing this year! 
I used to ask for help to review the text.
Now, I did all by myself!
It made my life easier!

3,751,687

Suggestions

*from August to October, 2023

Qualitative feedback

More TIME
for teachers

“It used to take me 5 days to type the texts. 
This time, I locked
myself in my office and dictated
all the students' texts in 1 hour! 

It was so fast!

We were pleasantly astonished by the positive outcomes resulting from our AI utilization:

More INCLUSION
within children

”I have students who can't write,
so they dictated their own stories. They felt actively engaged
in the project.

It was so rewarding to
empower them!