Can We Talk?A Slack integration to help students succeed
My Role: UX Researcher | Duration: 2 Weeks | Project Status: Ongoing
Project Overview
The learning experience of General Assembly students is in-depth and collaborative.
The goal of the program is to make the students career ready in an accelerated amount of time because of this structure, students will need a strategy that includes digital tools to organize their time and tasks.
By conducting in person interviews with students who have completed the majority of the program, we were able to determine that the majority make use of the tools used within the course that they were already familiar with.
Scope of Work
This project took place on the General Assembly campus with the following assumptions
● Students will need ways to organize their time and tasks
● Students will need communication tools to work in groups
● Students will have individual approaches and needs in regards to their time and tasks
Process
Within this project we hoped to discover how GA students are currently managing their tasks and time, as well as more about what matters to them. From this research I was able to define where improvements could be made to benefit their learning experience. Then, low and midfi prototypes were designed which proposed the idea of integrating Slack into Google Calendar. From there in vision was used to create a clickable prototype based on feedback from the first round of testing. User tests from this resulted in recommendations for the most intuitive way to deliver the integration to the user.
Problem Space Statement
GA Students use a collection of methods to manage their tasks and time. These are a combination of what is used in the course as well as what they were used to before they entered the classroom. How might we use a familiar system to add a layer of redundancy to help the student keep important events and tasks front of mind?
RESEARCH PHASE
Goal of Research
The goal of our research was to understand the challenges students had faced in managing their coursework and lives at General Assembly. We created a discussion guide which would allow us to understand the students experience with time and task management, what worked, what didn’t, and what motivated them overall.
Methodology
In person interviews were conducted at the Flatiron campus. These interviews were conducted by a group of three in which one person interviewed one took notes and the other recorded the interview on otter ai for later transcription. From these interviews, respondents answers were synthesized for a deeper understanding of their experience.
Synthesis » Affinity Mapping
The above Affinity Map was created which revealed the below themes
“I like tools that are simple and familiar to me”
“I will get a notification, close it and forget.”
“I spend about 15- 20 minutes a day planning”
“I am experiencing various feelings about getting my work done, but organization lets me know its under control”
Findings + Themes + Insights + Takeaways
Students need layers of reminders since they are so busy. Students need a way to communicate information to all group members that can be linked to the task they are working on or time they are meeting together.
- Developing a way to connect time and communication would enhance the student experience
- Any tool created or enhanced will need to be one that is familiar to the student
- Students use memory , planners, calendars, reminders, slack, Trello, and asana
- Students feel most comfortable using tools and methods they have used before
- Students feel more accountable when there are group members involved
- Students need a way to enhance existing reminders or have them repeat
Sidney
This is Sidney. Sidney is representative of a typical GA student who might benefit from the integration of Slack into Google Calendar
Revised Problem Statement
Sidney often dismissed reminders and can consequently be late to or miss events. Additionally, they have lost time in group work when communication was lacking. Sidney likes simplicity, and doesn’t want to have to learn a new application.
How might we help Sidney with this by adding an additional layer of functionality within the tools they already use?
RESEARCH » DESIGN
DESIGN PHASE
The research conducted allowed us to design a method of time based communication where students can communicate with each other as well as receive redundant reminders
Early Ideation: Lo-Fi Sketches
Initial User Testing: First Round (What you tested, what you learned)
In this test I learned that the design was too simple and did not flow in a way that users were familiar with. The Prototype was redesigned based on this.
Second Round:User Testing
- A prototype was constructed in Sketch and uploaded to invision
- 5 Prototype tests were conducted by asking people on the GA campus to volunteer
- The tests were conducted on an iPhone 11 running software version 13.2.3
- All tests were timed and recorded, and completed in an informal setting on the GA campus
- Testing generally took between 10–12 minutes
- Users were asked to perform the following tasks on the next screens
- Hoping to learn if the integration is navigable and intuitive, if not how could it be improved?
Mid-fidelity Testing
Task One:
Enable Slack In Google Calendar
Task Two: Create a Slack Chat with your group, who are attending your scheduled event.
Task Three:
Turn on Slackbot reminder for your
scheduled event
Final User Testing (What you tested, what you learned)
Direct/Indirect Success rate of Task
2 was 60%. 4/5 users completed the task, and the average time spent was 1 minute 47 seconds
The severity of the issues with this task are significant, users who completed the task indirectly or abandoned the task expressed frustration. Users who completed the task directly, suggested it be done another way.
There was a high mis-click rate, and the mis-clicks were consistent among users who completed the task indirectly or failed
Prototype and Recommendations
Future recommendations which resulted from prototype testing are to have the send to slack feature nested in the plus sign, this is where users who succeeded indirectly looked for it. The second recommendation is to have Slack icon in the toolbar, that way users can turn it on or off or create slackable events right away. The third recommendation would be to use the Slack app to link the two applications instead of the other way around.
