HeyTalia

HeyTalia is an AI-powered personal assistant that simplifies communication workflows and automates tasks, easing teachers administrative burden.

As a chrome extension, it seamlessly integrates with existing platforms, enabling effortless content drafting with auto-formatting, template referencing, and pre-filling. This ensures consistency with the school's tone and style, reducing the time spent on vetting by RO.

Beyond communication, HeyTalia manages personal to-do lists, syncs calendars for scheduling, and streamline approvals process—freeing teachers to focus on teaching.

⚠️ The problem

We initially set out to help teachers produce quality content and streamline post creation in Parents Gateway (PG), enabling schools to communicate more efficiently with parents and strengthen school-home partnerships.

However, our research revealed a larger challenge—teachers spend a significant amount of time on administrative tasks, with communication being just one of many time-consuming responsibilities.

These tasks are often manual and spread across multiple platforms, leading to inefficiencies, excessive workload, and reduced teacher productivity.

Our final problem statement:

How might we reduce teachers’ administrative burden, by streamlining workflows and reducing manual work to increase efficiency, so they can focus on teaching?

🔍 User research

Understanding teachers’ pain points and workflows

We conducted 5 teacher interviews, an online survey with 34 respondents, and reviewed recent research findings to uncover inefficiencies in teachers’ communications and other administrative load

Inefficiencies in communication processes

• Existing AI tools require multiple edits as they do not match school tone and style.
• Back-and-forth vetting and refining slows teachers down
• Manually copying content between platforms wastes valuable time and caused undue stress due to fear of error in transfer.
• Managing too many tools leads to more time lost and less work done.

Significant time spent on communications - from 34 respondents

• 93% of teachers spend an average of 45 minutes drafting communications.
• 53% go through a review process that takes 2–3 days.

Collectively, teachers lose 28,006 hours each month—the equivalent of 159 teachers being pulled from classrooms just to draft communications on Parents Gateway (PG).

In additions, we referenced a November 2024 survey of 708 MOE teachers:

• 87% need more support with administrative tasks.
• 77% say administrative work takes up too much of their time.
• 65% feel that administrative tasks negatively impact their other priorities.

Our research underscores the need for streamlined workflows and automation to minimise manual workload and inefficiencies, enabling teachers to dedicate more time to teaching and student engagement.

💡 Solution

HeyTalia v1.0 - Tackling comms first

Given the time constraints, our initial prototype tackles one of the most challenging administrative tasks—communication. HeyTalia personalises the experience by recognising each teacher’s identity upon login and enhancing content generation based on the school’s writing style. It also syncs with personal or school calendars to support better content generation for school programmes with minimal prompting.

HeyTalia reduces communication-related admin burdens by focusing on:

Streamline workflows

• Chrome extension - Integrates with existing tools, eliminating the need to manage an additional platform
• Draft and send - Enables a seamless workflow from content generation to delivery

Reduce manual work

• Auto-formatting and pre-filling - Adapts and suggest content for different audiences and prefill to platforms like Parents Gateway (PG), Google Classroom, and Student Learning Space (SLS)
• Remembers past school templates - Reduces the need for manual reference to previous posts

Speed up processes

• Matches MOE school styles & formats - Ensures content adheres to localised school tone, style, and compliance, enabling lesser amendments during vetting process

💭 User testing and feedback

We put Talia to the test with 7 teachers and 14 participants at the hackathon feedback bazaar, gathering insights on usability, efficiency, and impact.

Usability Testing - with 7 teachers

• 7/7 teachers successfully drafted a satisfied content in under 8 minutes
• 6/7 teachers highlighted that pre-filling reduced repetitive manual work.
• 5/7 teachers acknowledged that the content was properly formatted to suit different audiences (parents and students)
• 5/7 teachers found that HeyTalia’s content aligned with school standards

Post-Test Survey - 100% of teachers found HeyTalia:

• Easy to craft content.
• Reduces manual effort in their work.
• Minimises back-and-forth amendments during the vetting process.
• And would recommend HeyTalia to their colleagues

Feedback Bazaar (14 participants) - All participants unanimously agreed that HeyTalia:

• Has the potential to save time in content generation.
• Would be preferred over existing AI tools if further improved.
• Was easy to navigate and complete tasks with.
• Generated relevant and accurate content.
• Correctly adjusted content when switching audience.
• Has a pre-fill function that could streamline content generation.
• Is a tool they would recommend to teachers.

💬 What testers are saying

✔️ “It makes my life easier. I think that’s what we need to increase productivity for teachers.” — Eugene Cong, Head of Department, Science

✔️ “This is really a good platform for teachers to draft their announcements for parents with the right content within 5 minutes.” — Tan Jee Niang, Teacher, Food & Consumer Education

✔️ “HeyTalia has the potential to go beyond other AI tools by going the extra mile to support teachers in many other tasks.” — Soh Wei Cheng, Subject Head, Design & Technology

✔️ “A promising tool that can help raise teachers’ productivity. Would love to see this being developed!” — Feedback Bazaar Participant, MOE

📣 Traction for HeyTalia!

Even before production, HeyTalia has gained interest from MOE divisions. Both Educational Technology Division (ETD) and Educational and Administrative Support (EAS) are keen to collaborate on further development and deployment.

Here's what they say:

✔️ “Please create one for EAS officers and would love to work with EAS PD unit” — Feedback Bazaar Participant, EAS Dept, MOE

✔️ "This is a great feature that could help teachers save time! Would love to find out more about how it works and explore a collaboration” — Feedback Bazaar Participant, ETD, MOE

📢 This early traction demonstrates the strong demand for a solution that streamlines communication and reduces administrative workload not just for teachers, but anyone!

👣 Next steps

HeyTalia v2.0: Personalise support and scaling up

Our next iteration will focus on addressing key teacher pain points uncovered through research and user testing

Expanding features

• Approval Workflow Support – Helps manage the end to end vetting process with fewer revisions, all in one place
• Scheduling & Task Management – Syncs with school calendars to suggest reminders and deadlines
• Expand Platform Integrations – Beyond PG, Google Classroom, and SLS, we’re exploring more commonly used MOE tools by teachers:
  • All Ears
  • Flexilist

Pilot Testing & Iteration

• Prototype deployment in 3 schools for 3 months to test real-world impact.
• Review success metrics and collect feedback to refine usability, efficiency, and adoption
• Successful pilot runs will inform further enhancements and expansion to more schools

Collaboration

• Working with MOE Divisions – Collaborating with Educational Technology Division (ETD) and Educational and Administrative Support (EAS) to explore their use cases

📊 Success Metrics for HeyTalia v1.0

Efficiency & Accuracy

• Drafting Speed: Average time teachers take to craft a ready-to-send post with HeyTalia (target: 70% reduction)
• Content accuracy: Average number of prompts per month needed to reach the final post.

Adoption & Usage

• Installation Rate: Number of teachers who installed HeyTalia per week
• Feature Adoption: Number of teachers using the pre-filling function
• Engagement: Number of active users per week
• Usage: Number of posts crafted by HeyTalia per month

Satisfaction & Feedback

• User Experience Surveys: Feedback on efficiency, accuracy, and ease of use.
• Qualitative Insights: Teachers’ comments on HeyTalia’s impact on their workload.

North Star Metric (NSM): Number of teachers logging into HeyTalia per week.

👥 Meet the team behind HeyTalia