ARC- Real, Sticky and Connective Life skills Education

Disclaimer: Due to NDA's, I will not be able to share any final insights and areas of application and

will be focusing on process & high-level findings + recommendations..

Limited details of the project are shared and the content does not reflect the final end-result produced by the company.

        

        

What is ARC Lifeskills?

Each of us feel that our life has an unpredictable story arc and often feel helpless when we try to deal with all the unique trajectories life takes us in. We sincerely wished that we had enough skills to help us navigate life. We simply would have wished to have learnt these things in school.

Hence, apart from academic intelligence, we want our future generation to be socially and emotionally intelligent beings who are equipped with necessary Real life skills.

So, ARC is an online educational platform intending to offer real-life skills training amongst middle and high school students through school-based module subscriptions.

Prototype Planning

From the birth to the prototype of the product, the researches were carried out in multiple levels:

• Problem Statement Research

• Market Research (Stakeholder analysis)

• Competitor Analysis

• Product design Research

• Content Strategizing

• Prototyping and Testing
  

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Research Processes

I Defining the Value Proposition:

To identify the niche area in which the product could thrive was the first step in the process of developing the product.

A meta-analysis was conducted to understand the existing statistical scenario of life-skills education in the Indian landscape.

• A wide statistical analysis was done to sketch out the primary missing gaps in the Life skills education field, ranging from Mental health issues and importance of interventions at school level.

• The meta-analysis was carried out by referring Indian & International scientific journals, UN statistics, American Clinical Trials and Open Government Data of India.

A growing demand for education of life skills in students were identified however there were very few companies working towards it.

Thus, ARC aims to address the least spoken issues amongst students such as

• Finance handling

• Social & Emotional skills

• Healthy Study methods
  

Following is a very concise summary of the meta-analysis done.

II Target Audience Analysis:

The next logical step was to understand the concerned end-users and their expectations on the product. As part of this, remote surveys, interviews and focus groups were conducted.

i) Market end-user Surveys:

The survey participants were school students, teachers and parents from Delhi Public School and Banyan School (Jaipur and Chandigarh).

The survey results aided us in understanding the expectations of different stakeholders such as students, parents and school management.

The surveys helped in comparing the difference of opinion between the parents and teachers. Eg: The school claims that preliminary Life skills classes are offered in school but the parents insist on having Life skills education at school.

This discrepancy proves that parents are unaware of the Life skills ed in school or it is not creating an impact on their ward's life. Hence, more such biases, discrepancies were mapped as deeper the payer's needs.

ii) Semi-structured Interviews:

To engage in more meaningful qualitative research proceedings, we also had special interviews with the concerned school principals. Through the semi-structured interviews we were able to understand their perspective on how we could implement life skills education in mainstream schools.

The interview revolved around themes of school cooperation, product launch, identifying student's needs, teachers need for involvement etc.

Personal interviews also helped ARC to understand the school management system and their functional hierarchy followed.

The aggregated insights aided ARC to sketch their product launch strategy and to find means to break through the multiple layers of bureaucratic walls of school boards.

iii) Focus Groups:

Following which, we had focus group interviews with selective teachers of the 8th& 9th grade students.

Through structured interview pattern, we tried understanding how online education during COVID shaped students, how much does a kid know about life skills, are these skills taught in class, do students enjoy such education etc.

We exposed the teachers to the module content and gave them space to explore on the concepts ARC would cover. They raised questions and generated insights that helped in understanding the general psychological issues in a student.

Also, the interest levels of the teacher was measured through a quantitative scale to decide if a teacher could be involved as stakeholder while creating the content.

Thus, based on the extensive stakeholder analysis, we curated the structure and the trajectory as to how we wanted the product to flow.

III Target Audience Analysis:

Simultaneously, we conducted extensive Market Research to gain insights on the competitors.

We got in touch with experts on the same field to have a candid conversation with them to understand how Life skills education works in India. Those insights helped us to outline the threats in the field.

We also did a SWOT analysis of these potential competitor companies to identify the unique playing field that we could cover and play in.

The researched aimed to capitalize on the strengths as much as possible before moving forward to understand the external factors that could affect the company's growth.

Also the research primarily helped in gauging the potential threats for the company in terms of lack of mental health awareness amongst the society, lessened perceived value of the product etc.

Following is the preliminary market research survey summary:

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Product Development & Research

Once the foundational aspects are set, now its time to construct the product, The backbone of the company was the research-driven curriculum models, based on behavioral principles.

So, the product strategizing and design process happened parallelly to give a clear shape to the intended modules and what will be the concepts covered under the modules.

The product was developed based on

• Extensive medical literature review

• Market analysis

• Student interest trends

• Psychological testing procedures

• Expert advice and opinion space

The curriculum will have the following structure:

• Pre-psych eval

• Concept learning

• Concept questioning

• Post-psych eval

Following was the preliminary prototype product design after extensive product research and trials on competitor's products.

Finally, the prototype is being constructed as a web-based application for the end users (students) to access it from their personal systems.

As a future direction, usability testing and user experience research would be conducted to understand the pros and cons of the implemented prototype.