User study 01: Do students regard documentation as a burden or an opportunity?
Documentation plays a rather key role in students’ learning process. In design classes, students are always requested to do process book; in coding classes, students are also encouraged to document their work in GitHub…However, how do students themselves think of documentation? Does documentation help them learn better or just increase their workload?
We interviewed 4 students majoring in engineer, design, architecture and fine art, who all need to do documentations in their study. Surprisingly, we found that their attitudes toward documentation varied a lot.
After finishing the affinity diagram analysis, we found that students can be divided into three categories based on their motivation on documentation. We called them “opportunists” , “sharers” and “explorators”.
For opportunists, documentation works as a source pool for their portfolios and portfolios works as a tool to help them find jobs/apply degrees…Their inner motivation on documentation is more from their needs than their willings. Most of them don’t really into doing documentation process.
For sharers, documentation works as a “help button” to assist others later on. The inner motivation for them is mainly from the willing of sharing and helping. Such trend is especially popular among engineers, such as GitHub. We noticed that they always tried to standardize their documentations and cared about the readability.
For explorators, documentation works as a recording place to self-reflect and explore further. Contrary to the opportunists, what motivate explorators most is their interests and passion. their documentation is less readable but with strong personalities. When working, they usually forget to stop and record any pictures. Their documentations are more about final products.
So, will documentation will be a burden or an opportunity for students? After all these research, we finally realize that motivation is the hidden“big boss” .
