UX consultancy for 1on1Piano on existing designs
1on1 Piano is a responsive application that facilitates online music lessons. The app performs several functions, including pairing students and teachers, providing lesson scheduling and communication, offering a Zoom-like virtual meeting space to host lessons, and enabling parties with digital pianos to remotely connect their instruments for real-time interaction.
The creator of the app brought me on to design and build the marketing website, and to examine in-progress app interfaces and identify areas for improvement. I was not responsible for the UI of this application.
Improved verbiage
One thing that immediately stuck out to me was the nomenclature for “Rooms” – the virtual meeting space function. It took me some effort to fully comprehend what Rooms were and what they were used for – partly due to the ambiguity of the label. I suggested the small but important change to “Classrooms.” This immediately makes it clear that this is a space where lessons occur.
Information Acess & Hierarchy
The users of this app, especially teachers, will spend most of their in-app time on the dashboard. As you can see below, the profile information takes up the majority of the screen real estate, while the more timely information – upcoming lessons – is pushed to the bottom.
I suggested that the profile be minimized to allow space for more important information. On the revised interface, teachers can still see a few key pieces of information at a glance, and have the option to view and edit their profile page in another screen. Meanwhile, the most timely information about upcoming lessons and related actions are now readily available as soon as the user lands on their dashboard.
Structural revision
Examining the interface, I realized that there was no place for teachers to view a comprehensive list of their students. Teachers could access student profiles if they had an upcoming lesson, but what about students who hadn’t had a lesson in a while?
I did a quick mockup for the designer of what how I thought a My Students widget might function (below). I asked the designer to create a widget that would show active students with upcoming lessons first and deprioritize students who hadn’t had lessons for a certain amount of time. The widget would provide access to Classrooms shared with the student, link to scheduling, and link to the full student profile.
Finalized interface
Below you can the final execution of the students list widget. Teachers can easily see their active students with upcoming lessons at a glance, and add or modify lessons. They can also choose to see all upcoming lessons for a student if they have an established recurring instance with that student, or simply view the next upcoming lesson.
The addition of this piece of the interface eliminated the need for the less functional “Active Classrooms” widget.
