Tutor Hiring Process Mobile Redesign
Project Details
Tl;dr
Redesigned Engoo’s mobile tutor hiring experience to reduce drop-off and improve applicant confidence. Identified key friction points across onboarding, identity verification, and language assessment, then applied UX principles to simplify the journey, reduce cognitive load, and clarify expectations at each step. Through low-fidelity prototyping, iterative testing, and UX-law-driven design decisions, I proposed a streamlined mobile flow that improved comprehension, usability, and the overall emotional experience for prospective tutors.
Engoo connects students with online tutors and relies on a constant influx of qualified applicants. On mobile, however, the tutor hiring process—covering account creation, identity verification, and a language assessment—felt fragmented, confusing, and unnecessarily slow.
Prospective tutors were confronted with too many choices, unclear instructions, and unexpected delays. This not only reduced completion rates but also left applicants with a negative first impression of the platform.
The opportunity was clear: redesign the mobile hiring flow to feel intuitive, supportive, and confidence-building, while still meeting Engoo’s operational and assessment requirements.
The project focused on addressing three core challenges:
- Identifying usability and comprehension issues within Engoo’s mobile hiring flow
- Reducing cognitive load and applicant drop-off
- Creating a clear, supportive, and emotionally positive experience
Goal:
Design a mobile tutor hiring process that is intuitive, structured, and reassuring.
Success indicators:
- Faster and clearer navigation
- Improved comprehension of instructions
- A more positive emotional response throughout the journey
To guide the redesign, I grounded decisions in established UX laws and principles:
- Aesthetic–Usability Effect — clean, visually appealing design improves perceived usability
- Hick’s Law — reduce choice overload during onboarding
- Fitts’s Law — improve tap target size and accessibility on mobile
- Parkinson’s Law — remove unnecessary, time-consuming steps
- Jakob’s Law — align flows with familiar mobile patterns
- Mental Models — support linear, step-by-step progression
- Serial Position Effect — surface critical information where users naturally notice it
- Peak-End Rule — design for a positive emotional conclusion
- Occam’s Razor — remove unnecessary complexity wherever possible
These principles acted as both a diagnostic and design framework throughout the project.
I began with a heuristic walkthrough of the existing mobile experience, mapping issues against the UX laws they violated.
Key findings included:
Onboarding overload
- Too many buttons, blog links, and competing calls-to-action
- Unclear email confirmation and password requirements
- Excessive information presented upfront
Language & visual confusion
- Long country lists and ambiguous icons
- Dense text and unclear phrasing
- Low-quality camera effects during verification
Language assessment frustrations
- No warning before recording began
- Unclear question rotation and hidden timers
- Uniform difficulty regardless of applicant context
These issues compounded to create confusion, anxiety, and abandonment.
To inform the redesign, I reviewed comparable onboarding and assessment experiences to identify effective patterns.
I then mapped the existing user flow and conducted a card-sorting exercise, revealing opportunities to:
- Group related actions
- Remove unnecessary steps
- Align the journey with users’ expectations of a sequential process
The redesigned flow prioritised:
- Supporting applicants’ mental models of “one step at a time” progression
- Reducing alternate pathways and distractions
- Making critical actions visually prominent
Low-Fidelity Exploration
I began with paper wireframes to quickly test layout, hierarchy, and interaction patterns.
Key design decisions included:
- Streamlined onboarding screens
- Clear, singular calls-to-action
- A guided, step-by-step walkthrough of the language assessment
These concepts were then translated into low-fidelity Figma wireframes, introducing interactive elements such as buttons, progress indicators, and simplified assessment flows.
I conducted informal A/B testing on variations including button size, animation usage, and landing page layout. Feedback led to several refinements:
- Introduced Engoo-aligned colour cues to improve clarity and consistency
- Added confirmation animations to signal progress and reduce uncertainty
- Adjusted button sizes for improved mobile usability
A cognitive walkthrough further refined the design:
- Reduced logo saturation to minimise distraction
- Moved key information higher in the visual hierarchy
- Made small layout adjustments to reduce scrolling and confusion
The final design delivers a more intuitive, guided, and confidence-building mobile tutor hiring experience. Applicants are clearly supported through each stage, understand what is expected of them, and receive consistent feedback as they progress.
The redesigned flow reduces distraction, clarifies instructions, and applies proven UX principles to guide both behaviour and emotion—creating a more positive first impression of Engoo.
