Wachsted is a free tool built within one of the paid services that Angel Solutions produce called Perspective. It’s packed with information for teachers and heads to gather intel on Ofsted inspection grades across the U.K. as well as generating reports and analysis figures.
Perspective has both a Lite (free) and Full (Paid) version. If you are accessing Watchsted within the Lite version then you don’t have access to all of the features.
As you can see from image A below of the Full version, the current dashboard was in great need of updating. I collated the below points after speaking to stakeholders and trying to understand a little bit more about the problem we are trying to solve:
Image B shows the current Lite version. You can see that the paid for features are muted. I felt like this was a missed opportunity to convert some of the users to the full version.
John, a teacher at a multi-academy school is preparing for his Ofsted Inspection. He wants to be prepared and have somewhere where he can download all his various SEF reports and evidence files quickly. This would help save John some much needed time.
Assumptions:
I produced the below user and business assumption guides based off these problem statements.
Creating the following problem statements for this project helped me keep focused on the goals:
Maria, a teacher at St Lukes Halsall has just found out an inspector will be visiting the school. She would like to know about the inspector and in particular, find out what grades they gave to other schools in the area and what areas they highlighted needed improving. This would help her, and the school, pin point any improvements ahead of the visit.
User Assumptions
Business Assumptions
‘Be Ofsted Ready’ full version
Taking into account the differences between the paid and lite subscriptions, I began sketching and re-designing the main features of the dashboard which would essentially look and work in a similar manner. I wanted to add some relevant UI illustrations where appropriate. I made the infographic feature larger than the other features, as this was the one feature on the card that was free for Lite customers too.
For the full Perspective subscription, everything on the card is accessible, so I included some descriptive text to help the user understand the differences between the downloadable features.
Before:
After:
I added a descriptive tag on hover that gave some explanatory information to the user. I didn’t feel that ‘Parent view’ for example, was clear enough to understand on it’s own.
‘Help from Ofsted’ section
I had decided to minimise the ‘Help from Ofsted’ section, as these where just links to third party pages on Ofsted’s website and I didn’t want users to leave the dashboard.
‘Be Ofsted Ready’ Lite version
The dashboard for Perspective Lite was to look the same, but based on the problem statements, we needed to explain to the user what the paid features were and the benefits of upgrading, rather than just muting the options with no information as to why.
As shown, I changed the download icon to a lock 🔒 but decided to keep the descriptive text as per the full plan until the user hovers over each card. Then the text changes to explain to the user that they needed to upgrade. When selected, a pop up with information about how to upgrade was shown, encouraging the user to book a demo, allowing the sales team to get in touch (see image B).
Before:
Image B:
After:
Interactive Inspections Map
On the original dashboard, the map was just a link to a separate page. To encourage the user to stay on the new dashboard and explore the features, I wanted to utilise the map card and allow the user to do all the things that they could on the full map page here. For example, I needed to keep the ability to click on the location pins and review the information of each school via an informative pop up. This pop up would consist of the below:
Originally I had the Inspector map larger on the dashboard but I was asked by stakeholders to make room to include a marketing advert for Balance, our digital teacher product. It was a tight squeeze to get all the above features in so I decided to add a link to the full screen map page too, so the user could review the details in more detail should they wish.
Look up an Inspector
The ‘look up an inspector’ card (highlighted in red) was a simple link taking the user away from the dashboard. I re-named it ‘Inspector search’ just as it seemed a little more appropriate for a title and I brought the search field to the card.
Final dashboard:
Look up an Inspector:
Inspector map afterwards:
Re-designing the Watchsted dashboard was a very satisfying project for 'design thinking'. Trying to work out how to manage the Full and Lite features while maintaining the overall brand was a challenge. It was important to understand the goals of this project and what the stakeholders wanted to achieve from the start.
Like every live project, it’s an ongoing process of reviewing and updating elements of the design but it’s great to see the stats on retention of users compared to the old design. 👌
