Kumon
Kumon is more than a tutoring center; it is an after-school program that emphasizes self-learning and mastery of foundational skills.
Effortless Collaboration Between Parents and Tutors
Kumon Connect, a comprehensive educational monitoring platform, presented an unique opportunity to reimagine their parent-tutor communication system. The project aimed to modernize tracking capabilities while creating an intuitive interface for seamless parent-tutor collaboration.
×
![]()
Crafting Unique Skills
Understanding the brand
Kumon's core mission centers on developing self-learning abilities through systematic skill development. Our challenge was to translate this educational philosophy into a digital experience while maintaining their established values.
Business Problem
Communication Gap
To deeply understand parents' challenges across different student journeys, we conducted interviews with families at various stages of their Kumon experience. From elementary parents seeking more daily guidance to high school parents wanting academic progress insights, our research revealed consistent communication barriers:
- 56% of dropouts were directly linked to parents perceptions of goals or communication issues.
- 45+ minutes weekly spent scheduling tutor meetings and tracking assignments.
Our research with 7 families and 10+ survey responses shaped our understanding of user needs and informed our persona development.
Opportunity
Market Gap Assessment
The data revealed a clear opportunity: engaged parents drive better outcomes, yet current tools don't support this effectively:
- 56% of dropouts were directly linked to parents perceptions of goals or communication issues.
- Through conducting a SWOT analysis, we found that Kumon's primary competitors (Sylvan, Khan Academy) have a significant weakness in their lack of comprehensive progress tracking features for parents.
Design Challenge
Bridging the Communication Gap
Our research revealed a clear story: when parents stay connected with tutors, students thrive. Yet today, parents spend more time managing schedules than supporting learning. This led us to our core challenge:
“HOW MIGHT WE help parents support their child's learning journey by streamlining communication with Kumon tutors?”
We'll measure success through reduced dropout rates, increased parent engagement, and most importantly, improved student outcomes. Our target: transform 45+ minutes of weekly administrative work into meaningful learning support.
Reality Check
Expert Interview
We interviewed a Kumon instructor to understand the constraints and opportunities within the education sector. This validated our focus on streamlining parent-tutor communication.
Key learnings that shaped our design direction:
- Face-to-face communication remains essential and cannot be fully replaced by digital tools
- Parents need confidence through clear tracking benefits and limitations
- Direct, personal interactions are crucial for building trust
- Learning approaches must be informative and accessible to match individual student needs
These insights reinforced our focus: design a tool that enhances rather than replaces personal communication, while making progress tracking more meaningful for both parents and tutors.
Understand Our User
Designing for real users
Our research phase combined Google Forms surveys and in-depth interviews with 17 parents, alongside educational app market analysis. This comprehensive approach helped identify key user archetypes and their jobs-to-be-done, forming the foundation for our design decisions.
Framework
Finding where to intervene
By mapping out the current experience of a Kumon parent, we discovered that the challenges faced by our audience occur in the initial engagement stage (parents seeking information about their child's progress) and the ongoing support stage (when parents are using the Kumon app). Since we are unable to intervene during their initial search for information outside the app, we concentrated on the consideration and ongoing support stage, where we could make the most impact while preserving essential human connections.
Solution
App Fills The Gap
We crafted a mobile app facilitating seamless communication between parents and Kumon tutors to stay informed about their children's academic journey and enabling effective collaboration with tutors.
Dashboard screen
Breaking long-term goals into smaller, achievable steps enhances a sense of progress and motivation. We believe that by dividing these goals into manageable milestones, parents can better guide their children towards success.
Calendar screen
Consistency is key in Kumon’s program method, fostering good study habits and effective time management. We establish a regular daily routine that includes dedicated study periods to reinforce these habits.
Appointment booking screen
The booking interface simplifies scheduling meetings with Kumon tutors. This tool enhances communication between parents and tutors, fostering a collaborative environment that prioritizes the child's educational progress.
Learning performance screen
The interface features a graphical display to help parents easily track their child's learning progress. By presenting data visually, it offers a clear and intuitive way for parents to understand their child's achievements and areas for improvement, promoting informed involvement in their education.
Define Value
Business Goals
Our solution aims to enhance learning outcomes while preserving Kumon's core strength: meaningful face-to-face interactions. We focus on:
- Supporting, not replacing, personal communication
- Building parent confidence through clear progress tracking
- Facilitating trust-building interactions
User Value
For parents and tutors, our solution delivers:
- Efficient progress tracking that complements in-person discussions
- Tools that respect individual learning approaches
- Features that enhance rather than replace human to human interactions
Visual approach
Enhancing Brand Experience
Our visual design preserves Kumon's trusted blue identity while focusing on readability and accessibility. Each design decision supports our core insight: digital tools should enhance, not replace, personal interactions.
Key Design Principles:
- Clear hierarchy that prioritizes progress tracking
- Accessible interface supporting diverse learning needs
- Visual system that maintains Kumon's professional identity
- Interface elements that encourage meaningful interactions
"WHY" GREEN ?
While honoring Kumon's iconic blue that symbolizes trust and global reach, we identified an opportunity to enhance digital readability. Through A/B testing, we discovered:
- Green provides better contrast for tracking features
- Users found green more calming for extended app use
- The color maintains professionalism while improving accessibility
This strategic color addition complements, rather than replaces, Kumon's core brand identity.
Refinement after user feedback
Through multiple rounds of user testing, we identified key areas for improvement:
Prioritize the information and reduce unnecessary indicators
Organize the content for improved clarity
Each refinement focuses on supporting, not replacing, the vital personal interactions that make Kumon unique, while making digital tracking more accessible and meaningful for parents.
What we learned
Balancing Digital and Human Touch
Our biggest insight was understanding that technology should enhance, not replace, face-to-face interactions between parents and tutors. We learned that parents engage more deeply when they understand both capabilities and limitations of tracking tools, leading to better support of their child's learning journey.
Measuring Real Impact
This project taught me to focus on measurable outcomes rather than just feature implementation. By tracking metrics like parent engagement rates and communication frequency, we could directly link our design decisions to learning improvements. Our hypothesis that streamlined communication tools could reduce administrative time by 45+ minutes weekly while increasing meaningful parent-tutor interactions proved valuable in demonstrating the solution's impact on both efficiency and educational outcomes.
