Designing user experience for teachers — Google Design Challenge
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Design Challenge has become very common in the process of UX, Product, Interaction Design Job Application. I want to share my step by step design process and the design works I made for Google’s Interaction Design Challenge. I spent about 1.5 week doing this challenge in 2017.
1. Research
To find out the main factors that affect teachers to better remember students’ names, I implemented user interviews with 3 teachers who are actually dealing with this challenge of remembering the names and faces of students. I got key insights below from this user interview. You can see my full user interview quotes from “03. Appendix. User Interview” in the bottom of this post.
1.1. Understanding Users
How are teachers dealing with this issue in the class?
To find out the main factors for teachers to remember students’ names, I implemented user interviews with teachers that are actually dealing with the challenge of remembering the names and faces of students. I recruited and conducted interviews with three users who are or used to be a teacher. They all have had experience in remembering student’s names and faces.
Memorable Quotes
Q1. What kinds of students do you remember well?
Q2. What efforts do you make to remember each student’s names and faces?
1.2. Key Insights
Finding 1. There are certain students that teachers have difficulty remembering.
These students could mainly be the passive or introverted ones.
Finding 2. The more teachers know about their students, the easier they remember students.
Student’s characteristics such as favorites, hobbies, or hometown helped a lot.
Finding 3. Teachers use attendance sheets to check student’s names.
Sometimes the sheet also has photos.
2. Synthesis
3. Inspirational Article
I found “Iteration” is the best way to learn and remember things.
Iteration of the subject is the best method to build long-term memory. If teachers have chances to see student’s information repetitively, teachers will eventually remember all of the student’s names and faces. Here’s an article about the science of memorization using repetition.
“…Repetition creates long term memory by eliciting or enacting strong chemical interactions at the synapse of your neuron…”
by Gretchen Schmelzer, <Understanding Learning and Memory: The Neuroscience of Repetition>
4. Solution
4.1. How It Works
This journey map explains how “Remember Card” works as a whole. I chose to integrate it with the attendance sheet system since it is the most accessible tool for teachers. So I assumed that they should be able to use this Remember Card app more when integrating with the attendance sheet system.
WHAT IS REMEMBER CARD?
“Remember Card” helps teachers iterate with students who they don’t remember.
“Remember Card” enables teachers to learn each student’s name and face iteratively until they remember everyone’s. But it provides an environment for them to do it very efficiently. During each round of learning, the teacher will only study with those who they don’t remember.
4.2. User Interface
1. Adding notes to the attendance sheet
First of all, teachers will be given an attendance sheet through a smartphone app. They can keep track of each student’s attendance status in the app. In addition to each student’s photo and name, teachers can add characteristics to the note.
2. Remember Card — Card quiz
“Remember Card” provides a card with a photo of a student. If the teacher remembers the person’s name, then he will swipe the card to the right. If not, he will swipe to the left. Teachers can see who they remember and don’t at a glance in the review. Also, on the back of each card, the student’s name and characteristics are provided for the teachers to check if their guess is correct or not.
3. Iteration of card quiz with unmemorized students
In the review tab, teachers will view students they remember. They are able to do the card quiz only with those students so that they can memorize efficiently.
4.3. User Flow
5. Appendix
5.1. Brainstorming Ideas
At first, I had two ideas for the “Card Quiz”. Plan A was a card type that could be swiped left or right. Plan B was a circle type that could be dragged into a center to be saved in a list of remembered students. Plan A was finally picked since students’ photos in Plan B were too small in a mobile phone screen.
5.2. Prototyping
1. Wireframe
For both UX and UI, I kept iterating until I found the most satisfiable solution. Regarding wireframe, there were so many errors and things that didn’t make sense for the user in the first version. Below is the first version of some wireframe screens. Steps for reaching out to the attendance sheet and “Remember Card” was too much. So I changed it so that teachers can see the attendance sheet as a default in the final version. And I added note features since at first, they were not there.
1st version
Final version
2. Designing Style Guide
Regarding UI design, I tested with a lot of different colors and the overall structure. I tried to find a color that makes texts and photos have good enough visibility. I also wanted the card to be the main focus of the screen so that users don’t have a hard time seeing it.
Design Test
Style Guide
3. Prototype Animation
Lastly, I made a prototype animation using the Principle App. It’s so useful when I need to describe how UI works seamlessly. Also, it is a great tool to show micro interaction for transitioning screens.
What I learned from this exercise…
I did this exercise in the beginning of 2017. It was my last semester at my graduate school, MFA Interaction Design Program at SVA. The exercise was a definitely a challenging exercise but I really enjoyed it because I used what I learned from the school. Also, one thing I like about design challenge is that I can evaluate myself as a designer by feedback I get from the company and this time was Google.
If you have any questions regarding this work or anything else, please feel free to contact me, ujpark1@gmail.com.
