The First Storyboarding Session

Week 4

After spending time sketching storyboards and immersed in research, we were eager to finally get out to a school and put our concepts in front of a real teacher. Ken is a veteran in terms of interviewing teachers and conducting research in schools, but for me, it was the first time stepping foot in a junior high school since I was that age. We met with a junior high school math teacher during her lunch break in her classroom.

We started our storyboarding session by asking about her experience with augmented reality and since she didn’t have prior knowledge of AR products, we provided her with a pair of glasses to simulate the experience of wearing “smart glasses.” We thought it would be important to wait to show her the HoloLens until the end of our session to avoid comments on the look and feel of the product since we were primarily looking for feedback on the storyboards and scenarios.

Our approach for this session was to combine a “choose your own adventure” approach with showing specific storyboards with scenarios. We showed a scene of a classroom with holograms above students, with words such as “off-task” or “struggling” and asked about what she would do next or want to see next. If we had those screens pre-made, we showed them to her and progressed through a flow.

If not, having a blank sheet with space for her to write out exactly information she wanted visualized helped us capture detailed feedback.

We followed this up with hand-drawn storyboards that had more specific narratives.

After reviewing the storyboards, we had the teacher try on the HoloLens. We were hoping to see her reaction to using it for the first time and whether she would have any comments on the earlier concepts based on the HoloLens experience and comment on any challenges with the basic interactions such as air tap (which might be used, for example, to click on a particular student and take a deep-dive into their data) and bloom (which might be used to close a deep-dive).

Learning to use the ‘air tap’ gesture, to interact with a text box in a 2d window, floating above a student’s desk.

While the teacher was using the HoloLens, a student was watching from outside the class and we saw her laughing. We’ll definitely need to consider how the teacher will feel interacting with invisible objects in front of the class. She expected that some students would laugh at her if she used it in class. However, she also expected that students might quickly “get used to it”.

Key findings from this session:

• It’s important that the teacher can freely move around the classroom. “I wouldn’t want to sit at the desk the whole time.” One time, she sat at her desk and realized a student never logged on. “I thought I could not have to monitor you that one time! But I guess I couldn’t… the visual proximity means they work better.” The importance of moving around is something that Ken also heard from previous interviews with teachers. Hearing that she wanted to be able to easily move around the classroom and engage with students supported the need for a tool, like the HoloLens, that would move with teachers.
• Preference for higher level abstraction. This was a surprising insight because many teachers from prior interviews gave feedback about concerns about trusting text descriptions provided by the system. “I would rather have the words than the math because it’s much easier to quickly read…you don’t want to spend a bunch of time reading.” If that didn’t help, she would like a way to ask for more information, such as a button that says “click here for more”.
• There are many reasons for off-task behaviors. “Some off-task is a result of struggling.” Students may be sleeping because they are tired or going off-task because the material is too difficult or too easy for their current skill level. Show the underlying reason for an off-task notification so that the teacher can more appropriately address it.
• Desire for little drilling-down or interaction with the information visualized. Would rather see a “pop up” of students who are off making certain errors rather than clicking to get to that information.
• Details about the concept that is being misunderstood will help the teacher determine if she wants to pull those students aside and reteach. If it’s not a very complex issue like, ignoring negative signs, she wouldn’t pull them aside.
• Being able to see whether the students have used hints or other support in the ITS could help the teacher know when she should intervene. There are different help seeking behaviors depending on the skill level of the class. For example, the lower level class might ask questions too easily while the higher level class students might progress without fully understanding a concept.
• Provide a way for teachers to see progress over time. “It honestly slips your mind.” “If you sit down and look at that and you make a note to address, it’s easy to forget to address it.”
• It would be helpful to see information about the class while helping an individual student. “If you know who’s stuck… I will help you next without having to go over to them or I can say you need to get back to work without leaving.”
• Even in small classrooms (12 students), it’s difficult to tell at a glance which students need help. “Without looking at what they’re doing, it’s hard to tell they are struggling. There are some kids that won’t ask for help, even if they aren’t understanding it.”

Considerations for the next storyboarding session:

• Be clear early on that only the teacher will be able to view the additional layers of information we are showing — not the students.
• Have ready examples of what teachers might classify as more challenging math concepts for students. When asked about what would be an example of a more complex concept or material, this teacher had a difficult time generating one.
• Don’t sacrifice legibility for trying to make it look like a hologram. “You need bifocals to see.” Creating a lo-fidelity example in 2D of the augmented reality experience often relies on using white text with some sort of transparency.
• Incorporate a way to prioritize different features/views. It’s a challenge to get a strong reaction.
• Try showing the HoloLens first as a way for the teacher to get a concrete sense of what the holograms would look like in the environment. Test out specific interactions. The teacher we met with seemed quite tired and lit up when we brought out the HoloLens. It might be a great way to get the participant energized and excited about giving feedback when they can see a real example of the product.
• We need to be able to see what the teacher is doing with the HoloLens in order to guide them. This would also make it easier to record the interactions.
• Recognize that it’s ok to ask hypothetical questions or even leading questions during this stage. We found ourselves asking “Would it be helpful to you to…” with the answer to these questions often being “sure.” We’ll be able to eliminate those false positives during the mid to high fidelity prototyping stages.