Smart plannerLeeke Melaku,

Daniel Chapman and Harry Ambrose.

Who: Smart planner is an organisational app for students.

What: Forgetting to do work or wanting to organize work more easily.

When: At your leisure

Where: From any connected device (Smartphones, tablets, PCs)

Why: Unorganised students are always a problem and can end up disrupting lesson plans due to unfulfilled homework. Organised students have similarly shown interests as a way of keeping on top their workload as it can lead to higher grades as well as helping balance a healthy social life.

Our user experience

Schools are rapidly embracing new technology and sooner or later the paper homework planner (used by most all schools ) is soon to be outdated, providing an opportunity for digital planners. Paper Homework planners are expensive and are easily lost and not so easily replaced.

The problem

The user, in this case secondary school pupils, wants to effectively manage their homework everywhere they go. The app can also be used as a communication tool between students, teachers and parents.

What the user wants

The market is already full of calendar apps, most are of a very high standard and can be downloaded for free. What we are proposing is that the school pay subscription for the app, and the students get it for free. In return the school can monitor student planners and write comments in the same way, Giving them the same control over the E-planners as they would over the paper versions.

Our insights

My team, flashBang, is developing a mobile work/homework planner to help secondary students to improve organization for their school work. Similar to a calendar app, our planner will replace the easily lost, expensive to schools, paper planners that most schools hand out to their students at present times. Teachers can send the given homework out to all students and it will be input into their schedules, written in the exact way that the teacher wishes. This means that “i didn’t write it down” or “ i didn’t understand” are now unacceptable excuses for incomplete homework. You can rate your homework on importance and also tick it off when completed. You will receive notifications when a homework is incomplete and due in soon.

Elevator pitch

About Alicia:

• She is taking her GCSE’s. Uses her devices to be organised

• She likes planning things in advance

• She wants to keep up with her school work whilst still maintaining a social life.

• She uses current solutions but finds them to be awkward to use.

User profile 1- Alicia“I want to manage my day and

to be reminded of anything I need to get done”

Key Goals:

• To have a organised revision schedule.

Late night crammer

About Misha:

• He currently applying for university

• Lives in Rickmansworth

• Does not have a portable device but often uses computers.

• does not want to leave things to the last minute but often does because he writes his work down then forgets about it.

User profile 2- Misha “I end up working until two

a.m. to get work done for the next day”

Key goals:

• to get his work done earlier

• to get more

Schedule planner is one of two key competitors to our app idea “smart planner”. It is the more prestigious of the two apps and is highly regarded by all its users. However this app is not aimed solely at students and is more of a calendar app. Its effective use of graphic representations of data make it an easy to use, easy to understand and easy to work app that gains most

of its

recommendations due

to the app’s ease of

access and simplicity.

Alternatives and Competitors

Alternatives and Competitors

‘myHomework Student Planner’ is the second of our two competitors. It is the less superior of the two apps however it has won 5 ‘top 10 back-to-school apps’ awards between 2009 and 2012. Unlike ‘Schedule planner’, this app is not a basic organisation app for everyone but a student planner app, just like our idea ‘smart planner’. The main characteristic of the app is the idea of never forgetting your assignments. This is similar to us in that we wish to make sure that homework is not forgotten, however there are many more features to our app that will hopefully make it stand out from this app. I myself have downloaded the app and the constant adverts towards the bottom of the screen often slow down the app and are a nuisance when trying to type in added details. They also obstruct buttons and text.

Problems we address: As students we forget homework and have poor organizational skills.

Our Solutions: unlike paper planners we have at school, our app will send you notifications warning you when homework is due, as well as being accessible from any device.

Minimum Viable Product.

1. login 2.home screen 3.calendar of the week

We received mixed user feedback concerning their favoured calendar display settings for example 25% of our users preferred to view by day, 25% preferred a list of days the majority of 37% wanted to see a week at a time and 13% wanted to be able to choose.

Flow of app

wireframes-Ipad version

wireframes- Iphone version

Smart planner will be a web based app thereby allowing the user to access their virtual homework diary from any platform, of which the master data will be stored on the cloud, so all parties can access it independently.

Our app is very much data based requiring user input such as when the work is due, What we as a group have realised will be very useful is the various uses of the meta data, which we can study to show how people use the app such as how often and when they use it.

Feasibility

Unusually our app will not have the end users as customers but instead the app will be targeted at schools who will pay a yearly licence fee (this will be our main source of revenue) to give all its students free access to the app with no adverts.

This is an appealing choice for schools as they will be able to view student activity on the app, and be able to make comments on the student’s virtual homework diary. We will also be able to maintain parental involvement by allowing them to view and make comments on the student’s planner making the app a platform for parent/student/teacher interaction as well as for personal organisation.

With an app like ours, so heavily based in the education sector we will be able to pursue endorsement from schools and education authorities, and we can expand our market out from secondary schools easily by selling follow on apps to students after they have left school for university, college or the workplace, using the same organisational systems they have grown familiar with through school by doing this we could grow our potential target market year on year and not be reliant on schools as our only source of income.

Business case

Phase 1: Start up

Focus on an area with a high concentration of schools and give to one school free access in return for being a reference site for others, this will be a great opportunity to remove any bugs as we can assess in great detail how students interact with the app. This regional technique by picking out one school means that it will be easier to grow out to surrounding schools as they will have heard about the app by word of mouth.

Phase 2: Expansion

We will seek endorsement/approval from the department of education and Local Education authorities to show that our app is trustworthy and worthwhile. specialist press such as the times education supplement to achieve wider publicity. we will set up schools to act as regional pilot sites to act as local exemplars to encourage growth within their region, whilst building on the positive start up phase by enhancing and upgrading the app to keep it up to date.

Phase 3: Establishment

Instead of trying to get more customers we will focus on selling and advertising more products (such as our follow on app) to our existing customers.

Marketing