Forming compatible student teams for better outcomes
Students often struggle with mismatched project teams, which leads to unclear goals, uneven workloads, and poor collaboration. This project tackled that by creating a smarter team formation process that matches students based on shared goals, working styles, and availability—while supporting stronger course outcomes for instructors and institutions.
Using Lean UX, I ran secondary research, built rapid prototypes, and validated ideas with users over multiple iterations to maximize both user outcomes and business value.
Starting a team project can feel like a gamble
Teams are often assigned randomly or chosen by social ties. Instructors lack time and data to form balanced groups, and existing tools overlook compatibility in collaboration preferences and goals—producing friction, unclear expectations, and uneven work.
Higher course satisfaction and improved academic outcomes
The goal is better collaboration and stronger project outcomes—raising course satisfaction, long-term program reputation, and retention. Success indicators include higher team satisfaction, balanced workload distribution, improved outcomes, and fewer team-change requests.
A transparent process for compatibility-based team formation
The platform matches students by goals, skills, collaboration styles, and role preferences. It’s grounded in user needs and class context to improve fairness, clarity, and learning outcomes.
Literature review: team formation overlooks compatibility and balance
Academic literature showed that compatibility—collaboration preferences, goals, and availability—drives satisfaction and outcomes. Early alignment on mindset (not just skills) informed the onboarding inputs.
Letting students freely choose teammates can cause poor matches. Balanced skills reduce friction and improve collaboration. — Lopez et al., 2021
Current formation relies too much on chance; using goals, strengths, and availability can automate better matches. — Lopez et al., 2021
Group strategies should consider skills, goals, and personality; availability and style influence cohesion. — Odo et al., 2019
Proto-personas & opportunity framing
I created two proto-personas—Alex (CS undergrad) and Rachel (CogSci grad). Both experienced mismatched teams, unclear expectations, and uneven workloads. Alex wants strong portfolio projects; Rachel seeks meaningful research partnerships.
Business Opportunity Statement
The status quo relies on instructor assignments or self-selection, rarely considering goals, styles, availability, or work preferences.
Products like CATME don’t provide a balanced, transparent process matching interpersonal fit and project goals.
Help students form better-matched teams with fair collaboration, clear roles, and stronger outcomes.
Higher-ed students in project-based courses.
Better-matched teams, smoother teamwork, stronger results.
Pirate Metrics → Outcome-to-Impact
I first used Pirate Metrics to validate the MVP necessity (focusing on acquisition), then layered in Outcome-to-Impact Mapping after observing retention/usage to connect student outcomes to institutional value.
| Stage | What I’m Measuring | What I’m Trying to Learn | How I Might Measure | Success Criteria |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 🧲 Acquisition | Interest & willingness to try | Do students see value? | Landing page with CTA | ≥ 30% click CTA |
| ✅ Activation | Experienced value | Are teams satisfying? | Post-match survey | ≥ 70% satisfied at week 1 |
| 🔒 Retention | Stick with team & use system | Is engagement sustained? | Peer-review checkpoints | ≥ 80% teams unchanged |
| 💰 Revenue | Higher course evaluations | Do outcomes improve? | Compare to past cohorts | Avg. score +10% |
| 🔁 Referral | Willingness to reuse | Do students want it again? | NPS / end-of-course survey | ≥ 60% would reuse |
How might we help students find compatible teammates?
I ran a design studio exercise (6-up) to quickly explore options, then mapped features to user and business outcomes to prioritize.
Hypothesis Mapping
Mapped each feature to a concrete user and business outcome to ensure everything we built had a reason to exist.
| Business outcome | Persona | User outcome | Feature |
|---|---|---|---|
| Higher course evals & performance | Alex & Rachel | Join a group with shared goals | Onboarding survey + past projects |
| Improved institutional outcomes | Alex & Rachel | Enjoy group experience & learning | Prompt-based grouping |
| Higher placement rates | Alex & Rachel | Work aligned to strengths | Interest-based channels |
| Higher retention & experience | Alex & Rachel | Clear expectations up front | Course-embedded analysis |
Prioritized hypothesis & risky assumptions
Evaluated two candidates against value and risk to decide what to build first.
Higher team satisfaction via onboarding + past project compatibility
Stronger performance via prompt-based grouping
We believe we can achieve higher course evaluations and stronger program performance through well-formed teams if students join groups with shared goals and interests, supported by compatibility data from past projects and an onboarding survey.
Risky assumptions
What the prioritized hypothesis depends on being true.
- Students care about being matched with compatible teammates.
- Students will complete onboarding.
- Compatibility (goals, projects, skills) drives satisfaction.
- Past performance predicts future team fit.
- Students trust the process.
MVP development & walkthrough
The landing page validated interest but didn’t communicate how it works. I built a clickable prototype to demonstrate onboarding and matching, and to validate the assumption that students would complete the flow.
Design rationale
- Onboarding content grounded in insights: questions about goals, collaboration style, and roles reflect literature + survey feedback.
- Clearer concept communication: participants needed more context—prototype made value tangible.
- No prior tool familiarity required: flow is simple and self-explanatory.
Unmoderated online testing
Participants
Seven graduate students with recent team-based coursework (CS/Product Design).
Objectives
Move beyond concept interest to assess whether users understand and engage with the value, flow, and functionality: complete onboarding, understand matching, and feel confident joining a group.
Risky assumption under test
Students are willing and able to complete onboarding.
Research questions
- Do users understand the purpose/value of onboarding?
- Is joining a group clear and satisfying?
- Does the team overview reduce uncertainty?
Tasks
- Complete onboarding (goals, collaboration style, roles, availability).
- Choose a recommended group.
- Explore the team overview and reflect on readiness.
Results & next steps
Key takeaways
- All participants completed onboarding. SUS averaged 82.5 → flow is intuitive and supports the assumption that students will complete it.
- Students want insight into teammate working style & communication. Added scenario-based questions (SJT-inspired) to capture behavior/ethic without lengthening the form.
- Students want more context before joining. Added a team preview (goals, roles, availability) with privacy-safe details to support confident selection.
Two major iterations
Scenario-based questions → richer insights, fewer steps
Replaced two direct questions with one scenario prompt to capture work ethic, communication, and personality— informed by SJT research—to keep the flow lightweight.
Show member details earlier → more confident selection
Surfacing teammate info (goals, roles, availability) prior to joining improved confidence and reduced uncertainty.
Reflection & what I’d do next
Quick-and-dirty, then iterate
Small, testable steps (LP → prototype → unmoderated tests) let me validate assumptions early and shape the solution to what students actually need.
Business POV
I framed decisions to maximize both user value and institutional outcomes—so the work ties to satisfaction, retention, and performance.
Future work
Run another usability round on the changes, then validate the assumption that compatibility (goals, past projects, skills) increases satisfaction over time.