PROBLEM
K12, who specializes in online education, routinely conducts surveys that targeting parent's who have expressed interest but did not commit to registering their child in the program. It was found that the main reason these parents did not enroll their children was because they were not very familiar with online education in general and were hesitant to choose an online school over the traditional brick and mortar schools they know so well. We immediately saw the need to come up with a solution that helps both, parents, and prospective students, better understand what it is like to earn an online education.
RESEARCH
Now that we had a solid problem statement to focus on we decided it was vital to conduct a competitor analysis to determine what K12's competitors are doing to alleviate the unfamiliarity of online education in the minds of prospective parents and students. At the time, Connections Academy was K12's major competitor. After completing a competitor analysis we found that neither company was doing anything special in regards to reaching out to parents and prospective students and helping them understand what it is like to take online education courses.
COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
PLANNING
With our findings we realized we had an opportunity to distinguish K12 above it's major competitor, as long as we solved our original problem. We thought the best way to help users understand an online education is to show them; to bring the experience to them. Our findings suggest that users begin to enroll and then do not complete the enrollment process. If we were to provide access to a content from that point in the user flow, we could help alleviate their uncertainties without taking them away from the Enrollment process. Whatever solution we came up with, we would also need to make it responsive and compatible with all devices and screen sizes.
USER FLOW
DESIGN
A few sketches later, an idea for an immersive experience emerged. This idea would rely heavily on actual K12 student's and parents showing us a routine day in their life as student takes classes and performs all other extra curricular activities throughout her or his day.
SKETCHES
As the marketing team began assembling actual K12 parents and students to interview, I worked off of the script created by the copy writing team to create wireframes of my idea. Presented two wireframe concepts to the team and one concept came out as the favorite.
WIREFRAMES
After a few rounds of approvals with the stakeholder and the rest of the team, one wireframe concept was selected and I created visual UI designs. These visual designs along with a detailed spec sheet were given to the developer for coding. After the photoshoot and interviews of the actual K12 parents and students the newly developed microsite was populated with the updated content.
VISUAL DESIGN
IMPACT
A Day in the Life microsite helped prospective parents and students better understand what it is like to take online education courses. It also helped differentiate K12 from it's competitors as no other competitor has gone to this extent to help their prospective users gain a better understanding and in return the impact on K12's enrollment has been positive.