Teacher’s Lounge
Mobile app reducing Burnout & Turnover Across 2 Million Educators
Teacher’s lounge aims to provide mental health resources for over 44% of educators who feel burned out in their jobs, causing 23% of educators to leave the workforce annually.
Deliverables
Recruitment Screener, Interview Guide, Discovery Interviews, Affinity Clustering, Journey Maps, User Types, Personas, User Workflows, Wireframes, Prototypes, Competitor Analysis, User Testing
Design Process
Define research and business goals and vision, gather context via qualitative and quantitative UX research methods, ideate on solutions, prototype solutions, test solutions
Impact
2 million U.S. educator market. 44% of educators feel burned out. 23% of educators leave workforce annually.
Defining and scoping the problem space
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We prioritized elementary school educators within the sector using a stakeholder map.
All educators are facing high burnout rates, but we focused on Elementary educators since they often have the added task of working with children who are still learning social and emotional strategies, alongside academic learning, which can add the complexity of their jobs.
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We interviewed 9 educators and principals facing burnout within public and private school systems.
The teachers we interviewed came from public, private and charter schools.
6 of the educators had more than 5 years of experience.
3 educators had more than 10 years of experience.
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We noticed themes around Mental Health, Access to Resources, and Community Importance from interviews and affinity clustering
1. The mental and physical load is large and consuming
2. Mental Health Uncertainty: not knowing what mental health care means in practice
3. It’s a struggle to separate the job from your identity
4. Teachers to WAY more than just teach
5. Quiet, alone time is a coping mechanism used daily
6. Community and having people support you is important
Synthesizing interviews to create user types.
Focusing on educators dealing with a high amount of stress, we wanted to target those who were actively seeking solutions and were most likely to try our MVP solution.
Focusing on the stressed with nowhere to go user type we built a persona.
Erin is a seasoned educator who loves her job but really struggles to consistently make smart and healthy choices and this leaves her feeling overwhelmed and burned out.
Visualizing Erin’s user journey as an educator
Taking key insights to further
define the MVP by running
an Ideation Workshop
Considering how Mindfulness, Connection & Resources support educators, we asked:
How might we create something that facilitates a meaningful end of day practice?
How might we create a space that allows educators connection and/or community?
How might we create an opportunity that connects educators with practical resources?
Workshop Insights
Educators are low on time and are completely exhausted at the end of the day. They don’t want another thing added outside of school hours.
Connection and community are highly valued and make the job easier.
Finding small ways to feel seen, understood and valued would improve educator mindsets.
Completing a Competitor Analysis to understand what, if any, solutions exist
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Calm.com
LACKS: A social space for community and collaboration among educators.
INCLUDES:A space for meditation and regulation, ways to address stress in the moment
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Headspace
LACKS: A social aspect to connect educators and build community.
INCLUDES: Meditation and care/chat function, can support with stress strategies in the moment.
What’s next? View the Teacher’s Lounge wire-framing and prototyping process.
Landing on our MVP, we created a social solution that works within a school community to facilitate meaningful connections among teachers.
Our app, Teacher’s Lounge, prompts Teachers to complete an activity at the end of the day. This allows for reflection, closure and lays the foundation to community building.