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Introduction
The workflow between students and professors is chaotic at best, so there is a need for a service to take care of it. Since many universities do not provide a useful tool on how to handle communication, scheduling and sharing material with students, every professor has to find their own way. Because of the processes being different from professor to professor, there are often smaller issues with students not understanding the process well.
Process
Design thinking
Empathize,
Define, ideate, prototype
Empathize,
Define, ideate, prototype
Timeline
04.2019 – 06.2019
9 weeks
9 weeks
Tasks
UX research
User interviews
Product development
Wireframing & prototyping
User interviews
Product development
Wireframing & prototyping
Problem statement
Students have to use too many different tools and ways to do the same things. This introduces mistakes, frustration and wastes time. Students need to keep track of all the different tools, communication channels and login details. Also, the professor has to find their own way on how to communicate with the students. Since there is no specific service to do so, they need to rely on other services who are not meant for this usage. They only use a fraction of the functionality of a service that is too complex and broad.
Current way of solving
Students simply use and try to adapt to every professor's own way of communication and material sharing. Many students use additional different applications like Kakaotalk, Everytime, Sticky Notes, Apple Notes etc. to keep track of assignments, schedule and place. Few also simply try to remember the schedule and assignments for the next lecture, or where to find information about it.
Lecture process
Analysing and understanding the study process and the interactions between professors and students. Following an aggregated 6 week class sequence from the perspective of professors and students.
Professors
Students
Pain points
The main demographics of the service, students and professors, have vastly different pain points and are therefore listed separately.
Students
- I need to keep track of my lecture schedule
- I need to keep track of my deadlines
- I want to find information about assignments, schedule etc.
- I don’t want to use so many different applications at university
- I want an easy way to share my assignments
- I need an easy way to communicate with my professor
- I want to be quickly updated on changes in lecture
- I want to easily share my team work
- I need an easy way to get and save data from professor and other students
- I want an easy way to transfer my presentation to the school computer
- I don’t want to waste time on administrative work
Professors
- How can I share homework or projects with my students
- I want to easily communicate milestones or deadlines to my students
- I want an easy way for my students to submit assignments and for me to check it
- I want an easy but private way to communicate with my students
- I want a platform where students can exchange information and ask questions
- I don’t want to learn new things, it should just work
- I need to check my students' attendance - I need to move my presentation to the school computer
- I don’t want to waste time on administrative work
Dividing problems into pillars
Sharing
Files need to be shared between professors and students, as well between students themselves. Often those files should be accessible by anyone. Professors and students write comments on shared files.
Schedule
Students need to keep track of their schedule and take notes related to lectures and assignments. Professors need a way to keep track of their lectures and deadlines. Attendance checks by students and professors.
Communication
Professors need to communicate with their students, but also for students to communicate with each other. This includes group chatting, direct messaging or one time notifications.
Memo
Students need to keep different kind of notes, from assignment explanations to announcements and study.
Tools in use
Sharing
- Naver café
- Webhard
- Blackboard (web app)
- Kakaotalk
- Dropbox
Schedule
- Everytime (lecture schedules app)
- Notebook
- Various memo apps
- Various scheduling apps
- uCheck (University app)
Communication
- Naver café
- Blackboard (web app)
- Kakaotalk
- In person
- Zoom
- Webex
Memo
- Notebook
- Smartphone camera
- Loose papers
- Various memo apps
- Kakaotalk
Detailed analysis
Clustering the three main pillars into sub-categories, defining which functionality is actually being used by whom, and deciding on their level of pain. Biggest pain points shall become the main focus of the service.
Memos are not considered a pain point in our scope and will not further be included.
Memos are not considered a pain point in our scope and will not further be included.
Communication
Pain points with the heaviest weight are communication of announcement, finding those announcements again, and commenting on submitted assignments.
Scheduling
The biggest pain point in the beginning of the semester is finding information about a lecture, i.e. when and where the lecture starts. During the lecture, the pain point shifts to finding the deadlines of the different projects and assignments.
Data exchange
The biggest paint point is not to have a single instance to submit assignments to and being able to add comments to submissions.
Summary
In this graph, we can see what main functionalities we need to cover and how they interact with each other.
Product structure
Deciding on the scope for the service and creating the technical structure of the service. Defining which devices are mainly used to solve a problem.
Infrastructure
A modular view of the technical structure of the service. Most people use their smartphone for acquiring information in a fast way and do other smaller tasks. Submission of work and checking on feedback almost exclusively happens on a notebook or pc.
Directory structure
Files need to be stored for various classes, those might be submissions, lecture material, and so forth. Files also need to be stored on a room basis, e.g. holding a presentation in that room and storing the presentation files in a location where the computer in that room has access to.
Service structure
The service contains two main parts, an application and a network attached drive. The application provides all the functionality, while the network drive provides a fast and easy way to share and submit files. The need of the university staff and students are different, therefore the application UI is split in two.
Scenarios
Submitting assignment and commenting
A student submits an assignment for a professor to check and write feedback.
A student submits their work through the connected network drive. This will trigger a notification on the professors end.
The professor is being notified that an assignment has been submitted. When he clicks the notification, they will be directed to the screen with the submitted file.
The newly submitted assignment is displayed. The professor clicks the file to download it and opens it in another app.
After returning to the application, the file is no longer marked as a new file. The professor clicks the message symbol to write his feedback.
The professor writes a comment and closes the application.
The student opens the application by clicking on the newly received notification.
The student is directly routed to the assignment comment screen. The student checks out the message of the professor and acknowledges it.
Attendance check
Students must mark their attendance at the beginning of all lectures. This process has to be repeated for all lectures and is cumbersome, therefore reducing the necessary steps has a high priority.
The student opens the app and sees the home screen. UChecks for today's lectures are listed on the home screen. The student clicks the UCheck field for the current lecture.
The student is presented with an overview of the most important data for UCheck and clicks the check-in button.
A confirmation screen pops up, and the process is finished. The student can either click the OK button to return to the home screen, or close the app. The student clicks the OK button.
The current lecture is marked as successfully checked-in on the home screen.
Notice check
A student checks an older announcement to see when they need to go to a lecture for their assignment feedback.
The student opens the app and clicks on the bottom navigation "lectures".
The student is presented with a list of lectures they attend. They click on the lecture, they look for the announcement.
The application shows the lectures sub-categories. The student clicks on announcements.
The student clicks on the second announcement to be able to view its content and comments.
They check their time for the feedback and close the application.
Check the comments on a submitted file
A student forgot what the professor wrote about their submission and needs to check the comment again.
The student opens the application and clicks the bottom navigation "Files".
They are presented with a list of all lectures they have registered and lecture rooms they have access to. The student clicks on the lecture where they submitted their assignment.
The student sees a list of all directories and uploaded files. The student selects the directory containing the submitted files.
They see a list of all submitted files and possible subdirectories. To check the comments, the student clicks on the message icon next to their submitted file.
The student checks the professor's comment and closes the application.
Preparing for a presentation
In order to hold a presentation during class, students need to send their presentation files to the lecture room's computer in advance.
The students send their presentation file to the lecture room's computer via the attached network drive.
Before starting the presentation, the student opens the previously sent file on the lecture room's computer.
Lesson Learned
User research might uncover insights that do not align with the original vision, however, this should not be seen as a failure or mistake, but an opportunity to deliver a better product. User research should never be seen as a means to prove one's idea or design, but to generate insight and inform better decisions.