“The Five Star Study App is a great way to merge paper and digital note taking. Proud to have worked on this project and excited for where we go next.”
Juli Hallas
Senior Manager Global Product Development - Digital Innovation at ACCO Brands
Client
ACCO Brands Corporation, a leader in educational and office supplies, sought to enhance its digital offerings in the realm of student planning and time management tools.
Overview
There's limited research on students' planning habits. The new feature set will focus on planning and time management, separate from note-taking functionalities, but will be included in the same application.
Ask
Enhance the Student Planner product by integrating it with app functionality. This integration aims to complement how students plan their time.
Solution
Eight Bit Studios employed a comprehensive approach to enhance ACCO's app, successfully integrating new features that improved both functionality and user experience. Key deliverables from this collaboration included:
Research Screeners and Discussion Guides
Consolidated Research Findings
Feature Prioritization and Recommendations
Visual Concept Designs for key features
Results
ACCO successfully integrated Eight Bit Studios' recommendations and concepts into their app, leading to an improved product that better met the needs of students. This collaboration enhanced the app's usability and functionality, contributing to ACCO's success in the digital space of student planning tools.
Discovery & Ideation
Discovery and Ideation Sessions for Note Capturing Mobile App: Collaborative workshops with ACCO stakeholders led to the creation of new concepts, including a flashcard feature for the app.
Ideate and select 2 - 3 key features for this solution that meet the needs of the user (solves a pain point or capitalizes on an opportunity) and meet the business goals of this initiative.
Create some early visual concepts of those key features for ACCO to socialize.
And of course, to garner engagement and spark enthusiasm.
Research
Extensive research to understand student planning habits, leading to the development of new concepts for the Student Planner app. This included:
Partnering with a 3rd party for research recruitment
Conducting 1:1 Zoom Interviews with students
Presenting findings and leading a feature prioritization workshop with ACCO stakeholders.
Product & Feature Enhancement
Collaborate with the Eight Bit Studios team to further explore users' pain points and opportunities for Student Planning, develop provisional personas and ideate on prioritized Student Planner app features that were outcomes of Feature Prioritization sessions.
Focusing on 2-3 features, Eight Bit will design 3 key screens to visualize the functionality and flow of the Student Planner app feature.
Design Concepting assumes we will leverage existing app design patterns and styles as a foundation for all concepts.
