Simply put, Dweeber.com is a social networking site dedicated to helping middle through high-school students with their homework. The core of the site is a protocol of fun psychometric exercises that uncover a student’s learning style. Although genius in concept, the Dweeber.com beta site didn’t live up to end user expectations. The initial beta site performed poorly in user testing within the target demographic. Further testing uncovered user experience issues that led the Dweeber leadership team to suspect that user adoption and retention would suffer if the beta went live. Enter Mad*Pow.

To ensure the success of Dweeber.com, Mad*Pow rolled out a UI redesign of the site, concentrating on user research. With the help of local educators, we conducted three group testing & feedback sessions of the site. These groups were made up of five to six students, all of similar age & grade. They were guided through the entire dweeber.com experience, from the initial registration process to participation in an online study session. These groups met in a controlled environment and were moderated by a UX specialist who could gauge optimization.

By engaging with the students and discovering how they interacted with the site, Mad*Pow was able to optimize the redesign to cater to specific learning styles and then match students of similar learning styles to optimize collaborative online study sessions. Dweeber.com is targeted for use primarily during after school, home-based homework sessions where friends in the same classes, same school, or studing the same topic, can collaborate on homework online.

The time vested in user research made a significant impact in improving peer-based academic knowledge sharing. Dweeber.com is now a seamless student platform which promotes education & communication and offers its users access to a variety of information through diverse channels.