Summary
01 — Problem
The Core Problem
Fee Collection & Fee Discount were one of the most requested salient feature that was responsible for the sale the nucleus school app, the only problem was that user experience was engineered but not designed. So it was functional but it required a lot of hand holding with the schools that was costing them in onboarding friction & slow sales cycles.
There were issues with the steps it took to perform operations particularly - partial fee collection where parents want to pay part of the fee and accountants had to adjust the amount against the fee headers of the particular student.
The interface & user journey to perform fee collection was not extremely convoluted, So the impromptu solution from the company was to provide extensive support to explain the app interface and guide every staff member across all the schools in person or using google meet to train them on the important features.
We are having a hard time explaining the features of fee collection to the junior clerks, …. as the feature is complicated to use for the first time
Sanjay Singh
SakalNarayan Memorial Public School
02 — Research
Research & Key Insights
We conducted visits & virtual meetings with partner schools in order to learn how clerks and accountants handled fee collection and discounts manually to understand their offline process.
After talking with the stakeholders, We jotted down the exact steps that were being taken for the fee collection & discounts.
Research Method
Field visits in schools to observe staff mental models for fees & discount.
03 — Solution
Execution
Fees Collection
For Partial fee collection we realised that Accountants/Clerks often adjusted the amount pending with either removing a fee header matching the pending amount or adjusting the amount in some other header to be collected in next month or term.
So we simulated the exact same user journey in the app which matched how they were performing the collection step in real life.
Fee Collection
Partial collection of fees can be done 2 ways.
Remove a fee header entirely.
Adjust amount in header to carry forward for next collection date.
Fees Discount
Fees discount was either adjusted on a particular fee header or a whole month could be discounted.
So i designed 3 different ways to give discount on fees including existing approaches.
01
Total Fee Discount
I introduced a total fee discount that will be applied on all fee headers equally.
02
Fee Discount by Month
A particular fee header is given discount by %, amount or disabled completely.
03
Fee Discount by Month
All fee headers inside a month are discounted by some % or amount or completely. (Disable a month)
Fees Receipts
Not an interface but still part of the fee collection experience is the receipt that Parents look at it to verify payment, staff use it to confirm transactions, it has to be clear instantly.
Fee Receipt
Redesigned receipt to reduce cognitive load and provide clear transaction confirmation for parents and staff
04 — Results
Impact
Qualitative Impact
Fee collection shifted from weekend batch entry to real-time transactions with parents present.
Quantitative Impact
75%
30%
05 — Conclusion
Learnings & Conclusion
Nucleus fee experience went from a feature that required lots of training to one that staff could pick up and use on their own.
The redesign removed a bottleneck in the sales cycle and gave schools a reason to trust the product.
Learnings
Designing for existing mental models reduces the need for explanation.
When engineering builds for functionality and design closes the gap between how software works and how people actually think, the result is always better business outcomes.
