Subjective Assessment
Designing an online flow for subjective school exams and homework at BYJU’S — so students can write, upload, and get feedback on answers the way they would on paper, and tutors can correct at scale.
Objective tests weren’t the full picture
BYJU’S ran online objective exams and homework for grades 4–10. User interviews surfaced a gap: subjective writing — the kind a teacher reads and responds to — was still missing, even though it’s core to building writing skills and giving students real feedback. We set out to bring that experience online, as a monthly test and a daily homework format.
User Research
Before mapping any flow, we spoke with students who’d only ever taken objective tests, and with tutors already correcting handwritten answer sheets for AssessEd.
Writing online still starts on paper
Tutors correct question-wise, not sheet-wise
Homework and a monthly test aren’t the same ask
Deadlines needed a grace window
User Flow
I started by understanding how the offline answer-writing process actually works — how a test gets assigned, attempted, missed, or resumed — and translated each of those states into an online equivalent.
Product Flow & Key Decisions
Once the user flow was mapped end to end, we traced how many platforms it actually touched. Correction was going to run through AssessEd, BYJU’S’ existing homework-correction software — and building deep new tech integration for it would take significant bandwidth. So the team took a demo from the AssessEd side and optimised our flow around it, cutting technical lift without compromising on what students and tutors needed.
A few critical decisions
Talking to AssessEd’s tutors, we learned they prefer correcting question-wise — one question at a time, across an entire batch of students — because it’s easier to hold the correction guideline in mind that way.
To match that, students needed to upload answers question-wise from their portal, so responses arrive already categorised and tutors can move through corrections faster.
Homework vs. test aren’t the same problem
Homework goes out after every class and typically runs 5–6 questions. A subjective test happens once a month and runs 20–25 questions. Question-wise upload means cropping each answer separately — manageable for 5–6 questions, exhausting for 20–25. That difference in scale is what led us to design two separate upload approaches.
Subjective Homework vs. Subjective Test
Same underlying feature, two different trade-offs — one optimised for a student’s time, the other for a tutor’s.
| Criteria | Subjective Homework | Subjective Test |
|---|---|---|
| Frequency | Daily | Once a month |
| No. of Questions | 5–6 | 20–25 |
| Question-wise Upload | Yes | No |
| Student Effort | Moderate | Easy |
| Tutor Effort in Checking | Easy | Moderate |
Visual Design
Subjective Homework
The homework experience is built around the daily habit — a short list of questions, each with its own upload slot, so a student can crop and drop in an answer right after writing it.
Subjective Test
Visual design for the subjective test was similar to homework, but there were a few key differences we kept in mind:
Students upload one PDF or up to 10 images at once, instead of cropping each answer individually.
Alongside images, students can upload their answers as a single PDF file.
Since the test is time-bound, students often upload at the last minute — this buffer gives them room to do that. We’re using it to observe real behaviour before refining the design in upcoming sprints.
Students can begin the test whenever suits them, any time between 9 AM and 9 PM.
The 9 AM – 9 PM window is for starting the test — once a student begins, their personal clock starts. With a 2-hour duration, starting at 8:50 PM means they can submit up until 10:50 PM.
Released the moment the submission deadline passes — no waiting on manual publishing.
Every student gets a different set of questions at matched difficulty, so answers can’t simply be copied.
Designing for the constraint, not around it
The interesting part of this project wasn’t the upload screen — it was recognising that “subjective assessment” was really two different problems wearing the same name. Solving them the same way would have made homework tedious for students or tests unmanageable for tutors. Splitting the flow by frequency and question count let each side optimise for what mattered most to them.
For students
For tutors
Success Matrix
Early signal from students and tutors after rolling out the new subjective assessment flow.
for objective questions
Objective question completion rose after the new upload flow launched.
for subjective questions
Subjective completion rose too, as writing online started to feel like paper.
to correct an assignment
Tutor checking time dropped from 7 days to 3 days.
