Overview
Client: Titan, a School Nutrition Management Platform
Industry: Education & Nutrition SaaS
Project Type: User Persona Development
Role: Lead Researcher and Designer for User Personas
Project Summary
Titan is a platform that provides school nutrition management solutions to a diverse set of users, including school administrators, parents, and nutrition staff. The challenge was ensuring the platform felt specifically tailored to these users’ needs, improving overall satisfaction and engagement. Our goal was to create user personas based on thorough research to uncover key opportunities for improving the user experience.
Goals & Objectives
The primary goal of this project was to develop a deeper understanding of Titan’s diverse user base, which included school administrators, parents, and nutrition staff. Titan needed these insights to improve platform engagement and satisfaction, as many users found the system complicated and unintuitive. By building detailed user personas, we aimed to identify the unique needs, motivations, and pain points of each group, enabling Titan to make informed decisions about the platform’s design and functionality. Ultimately, the objective was to create a more user-centered platform that addressed these personas’ most critical requirements.
Research & Discovery
Our approach to developing user personas for Titan began with gathering extensive data on user demographics, behaviors, and motivations.
Demographics:
We started by analyzing internal data from Google Analytics and user surveys to identify the primary user groups:
- School Administrators made up 70% of the platform’s users, most of whom were women aged 35-50.
- Parents accounted for 25% of users, with a more diverse age range of 25-45.
- Nutrition Staff made up the remaining 5%, typically aged 40+, with lower digital engagement than other user groups.
User Behavior:
Using surveys, interviews, and platform usage data, we examined how each user group interacted with Titan. Key insights included:
- Administrators prioritized meal planning, financial management, and generating reports. Their platform usage spiked at the start of the school year and around reporting deadlines.
- Parents accessed Titan most frequently at the start of the week to review and pay for their children’s meals. They valued simplicity and convenience.
- Nutrition Staff used the platform to manage food inventories and menus but struggled with its complexity. They desired easier navigation and automation.
Motivations & Pain Points:
To better understand what drove users and where they faced challenges, we conducted surveys and interviews. Major concerns emerged:
- Administrators worried about data accuracy and compliance with school nutrition regulations, along with the need for quicker tech support.
- Parents wanted assurance that their children’s meal plans were healthy, budget-friendly, and met dietary needs.
- Nutrition Staff faced difficulties with the platform’s complexity and required a more straightforward way to track inventory.
Design & Strategy
Our design strategy was focused on making the Titan platform more user-friendly for each user group by tailoring the interface to their specific needs.
For School Administrators, we redesigned the dashboard to streamline report generation and make meal and financial management tools more accessible. We simplified the interface, ensuring they could quickly navigate and manage tasks, especially during high-pressure times like the start of the school year.
Parents required a simple and clear interface, so we enhanced the user interface to focus on quick meal reviews, easy payment processing, and custom meal plans for children with dietary restrictions. We also added visual cues and simplified steps to improve transparency in the payment process.
Nutrition Staff struggled with the technical complexity of the platform, so we implemented training resources and made key areas like inventory tracking and menu planning more intuitive by reducing the number of steps and introducing automation features to help them manage their tasks more efficiently.
Implementation & Development
The implementation of these user personas required both design and development efforts to translate the insights into meaningful platform improvements.
On the development side, we optimized the back-end processes to support the automation needs of nutrition staff and streamlined the reporting tools for school administrators. We used front-end development techniques to make the platform more responsive and accessible, ensuring it worked seamlessly across devices—crucial for parents who often accessed Titan on mobile.
For administrators, we built customizable reports that could be generated with fewer clicks, improving their ability to manage meal programs effectively. For parents, we focused on reducing the complexity of the payment system by integrating easy-to-use buttons and payment flow enhancements, ensuring they could manage their children’s meals in just a few steps.
Through close collaboration between the design and development teams, we ensured that these improvements were implemented smoothly, resulting in a more functional and user-centered platform.
Outcome & Results
The introduction of user personas had a significant impact on the Titan platform. By focusing on the specific needs of administrators, parents, and nutrition staff, Titan saw notable improvements in user engagement and satisfaction.
- Increased Platform Usage: Administrators reported a 30% improvement in efficiency when generating reports, while parents praised the ease of navigating meal choices and payments.
- Reduced Support Requests: Nutrition staff found the new automation features and training tools particularly helpful, leading to a 20% reduction in support requests related to inventory management.
- Enhanced User Experience: Feedback from surveys indicated a higher level of user satisfaction across all groups, with a 25% increase in positive user feedback within three months of implementing the changes.
Overall, the development and use of these user personas allowed Titan to make targeted improvements that resonated with its core users, improving both platform functionality and user engagement.
Lessons Learned & Reflections
Creating these user personas provided valuable insights into the diverse needs of Titan’s user base. We learned that effective persona development goes beyond surface-level demographics—it requires a deep understanding of user behavior, motivations, and pain points. By structuring the personas around the key challenges and needs of each group, we helped Titan make strategic decisions that improved the user experience across the platform.
This case also reinforced the importance of integrating user research into the design and development process from the outset. Through collaboration between research, design, and development teams, we were able to create a platform that not only met user expectations but also exceeded them in many cases. This project highlighted the power of user personas as a tool for driving product development and aligning business strategies with real-world user needs.