Tutoring App | 5-10 minute read
Glassroom: On-Demand Tutoring for Designers
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Key Points
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Created Glassroom from concept to prototype using lean UX methodology alongside my design partner, Anu, addressing design students' educational challenges
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Discovered the key issue through surveys and interviews with 20 students aged 18–34: A lack of human-to-human interaction in online learning
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Iterated on feedback to refine Glassroom, focusing on enhancing online learning interaction and accessibility
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Overview
Role
In this project, I was the User Experience Designer and Education Technology specialist.
Responsibilities
I worked closely with instructors, tutors, and design students. I conducted interviews, built low-to-high fidelity prototypes, engaged in moderated user testing, and presented my findings to a design school.
Tools
Adobe Creative Suite including Adobe XD, Usertesting.com, Google Forms
Stakeholders
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Design Instructors
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Tutors / Teaching Assistants
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Design school
End-Users / Learners
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Design Students
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Situation
I created Glassroom from concept to clickable prototype with a lean User Experience (UX) methodology and UX techniques. My design partner, Anu, and I showcased a viable solution to a current educational problem faced by design students. In this experience, I learned how important it is to involve and consider the user in each aspect of the design process.
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Problem
While conducting surveys with 20 students, ranging 18–34 years old, we learned that other students are struggling to find help when teachers are not available.
Anu, design partner, and I began to explore this problem space in-depth. From the data collected, we discovered that students preferred learning online because they can learn on their own pace and can receive personalized attention. Students valued feedback more from teachers and peers than from outside experts and their friends.
After completing the surveys, students, who had trouble learning online, expressed that many websites were distracting and not interactive, and there was no one to immediately ask questions to.
There is a lack of “human-to-human interaction" when learning online; a lack of design help from experts when teachers are unavailable.
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- common message from students via multiple interviews and informal discussions
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Design
Multiple iterations through moderated user testing taught me the importance of understanding how learners think through their tasks and asking for their feedback.
Designing mobile-first helped me understand that students preferred collaborative work on desktops.
Conducting Market Research
After understanding the problem from students' discussions about their learning experiences, I started brainstorming solutions. I analyzed various technologies to see which features they offered and what they lacked in popular learning products. During this analysis, I found that most products did not include a design tool for students and educators to jointly create and edit diagrams and visual interfaces. Introducing a shared work-board emerged as a potential unique feature to set these products apart.
Establishing the Design Language
I created a mood board that visually displayed possible color schemes, font styles, sizes, and weight, icons, and symbols to better design a product that complemented learning and technology. This mood board was a live document that changed throughout the product development process. The board was shared with other user experience designers, visual designers, web developers, and the business team.
Studying Learners' Behavior
Using a closed card sorting technique, I watched how 5 students placed keywords into pre-established categories and learned, by asking them to think aloud, their thought process during this exercise.
For example, “get feedback” and “find assistant” were placed in the “learn” category and “lectures” and “presentations” were more commonly placed in the “class resources” category. Identifying these patterns informed where students will most likely find information within the product.
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Takeways
Future Considerations
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Technology Enhancement: Explore the development of a mobile companion app to supplement the web-based Glassroom, allowing for touch-screen interaction.
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Business Opportunity: Implement Glassroom in educational institutions to provide students with expert, on-demand, online help, potentially incorporating a tutor certification program to ensure quality assistance.
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