Enculturation of UX Freshmen
Project Goal
Create a way to improve the enculturation of Purdue University User Experience (UX) freshmen and students changing degrees (referred to as CODOs). By implementing programs before and during the fall semester, students will better understand the UX culture before starting their first class.
Proposed Solution
An immersive branching video that will help answer questions a freshman or CODO may have and address any feelings or concerns they may have. At the end of each video branch, actionable items include tasks such as reaching out on Slack or picking up swag to assist in the final piece of the enculturation process.
Group Members
Rachel, Grace, Maddison, and Prince
Project Methodology
This project was a collaborative effort between all the graduate students in Dr. Colin Gray’s UX Graduate Cohort 2020 class. All twelve students collaborated on interviewing freshmen/CODOs, creating a co-design experience for various stakeholders, and partitioning the UX freshman or CODO experience into specific time segments: summer, early fall, and late fall. Our team focused on “late fall,” which includes November, December, and January. Through this class collaboration, we were able to refine our scope and create a solution to assist with this class’s overall enculturation process.
My Role (Individual)
→Conducted the secondary research
→Sketched ideas
→ Created Current state Journey Map
→ Made the concept branching video
My Role (with Team)
→ Conducted the interview sessions
→ Created co-design protocol; virtual conducted co-design session
→ Affinity Analysis for narrowing down the problem space
→ Brainstorming session and iteration of the design
Scope
UX Freshman/CODO students at Purdue University, on winter break (during December) before starting their first UX class in the spring.
Design Process
Research
Secondary research
Our project took off with an initial focus on understanding how, when, types, and stages of enculturation. This was done by initially reviewing existing academic literature. This phase of the research led us towards several opportunities; however, the key takeaway was more on understanding relevant stages of enculturation, “the observable culture(mentor-mentee programs, upperclassmen role models), practice and negotiation of the culture and unconsciously holding the values and beliefs” (Godfrey, E. 2008). These stages formed our initial understanding of the essential touchpoints that we needed to focus on when addressing our targeted audience issues.
Inherent also in the concept of a culture is the understanding that new members entering the culture undergo a learning process, an enculturation into a well established system of practices, behaviors, values and norms” (Godfrey, 2008)
Interviews
With the insights gained from the secondary research, the group decided to interview students to understand how the theoretical insight compares to the real world and a UX design student. We had the opportunity to interview three first-year students, of which one shared the early experience with how they were informed about the mentor-mentee program as:
“I got an email recently, that was talking to a guy who said he was my mentor. And I was like, wait, I don’t know what’s going on.”
Her responses pointed to how inadequate and invisible some of these efforts to communicate cultural norms were. For another interviewee, when asked ways her cohort interacted aside from Slack, she mentioned that.
“We just have the one that Colin setup. Cohort 2020. But there’s been no messages in there.”
This pointed to the need for creative ways of orienting the freshmen about existing ways of communicating and an intuitive means of making them use them.
Affinity Mapping
The below affinity diagram shows two relevant categories of five that were generated from the three interviews. Through this, we agreed that most of the students desired to know more about Slack, and they felt it wasn’t well introduced to them.
Co-Design
Having gained these initial insights; we invited several different user groups for a co-design session; this included freshman, sophomore, juniors, seniors, professors, and graduated students to understand their broad lived experiences on how better to integrate first-year students to the User Experience program and brainstorm towards the problem framing and a potential design direction.
We explored how to interact and engage freshmen at three different timelines, →summer, →early fall, and →late fall, during the session.
Key Takeaway: When quizzed about the emotional experience, participants mostly agreed that they were stressed and intimidated about their initial experience. The team agreed that this anxiety and fears were related to their lack of clarity about what to expect in the program.
Having formed these assumptions from all the research, we started ideating ways to define the UX academic career path in the program clearly *while finding ways to answer their individual questions.
Problem framing
Information conveyed through emails can be text-heavy and overwhelming. It is easy to forget all that has been thrown at you, and it isn't easy to keep up with everything at once that the emails throw at you. A feeling of disconnect can arise during this. How do you bridge the mental gap? To make students feel less anxious and uncomfortable.
Pulling from our own enculturation experiences, the interviews, and co-design, we started generating some ideas.
Ideation
Design & Prototype
We decided to go with the simplest but effective way of clearly communicating the narrative and visuals to our prototype development’s target audience. We defined the story we wanted to communicate to the users through a series of storyboards and connected them through google slides for the participants to the walkthrough. This prototype’s goal was to primarily understand how well the audience could situate themselves in the story being told and get their insight into how well the solution and resource provided in the video could solve their problem.
Our storyline for the prototype focused on a freshman who was anxious about starting classes, and we took her through stages to get help about the issues they are concerned about. Throughout our primary research, most of the freshmen we spoke to informed us about how they had little knowledge about Slack and they were not motivated to post on there. Having this concern in mind, the team decided to focus on the branch of the video that introduced Slack as a medium of communication to understand participants’ thoughts on it. We were also interested in emphasizing the importance of relying on upperclassmen for information, so we introduced the storyline that reinforced it.
Testing
When testing, we learned the importance of iterating that the final version of this video would be real people in a less scripted, more real setting.
“It feels like the production quality or lack thereof might actually really drive engagement. And so like it can’t be too serious. I would think, at least early on because not because I like, want it to be relatable or hip or whatever, you know, insert, you know, word or metaphor here, but I also don’t want it to. It shouldn’t be like a glossy brochure. Right.” -Current UX Professor
Once we explained this vision and the task of clicking through a designated scenario, our test subject, a current UX freshman, was able to perform the usability test successfully. The tester understood how the buttons led to different stories, and completed the tested story successfully. We learned after testing that the user was not familiar with immersive branching videos by telling us, “I’ve never seen anything like this” but then later told how, “I will say I’m excited to see it develop more. Like, I think it’s a cool idea. And I like your sketches.” Therefore, through this test, we were able to confirm that while users may not be familiar with a branching video, they are still able to click through the buttons to complete one facet of the story. While the usability test provided great insight to the ability for users to complete the video, it was the in-class and post-test evaluations which provided valuable insight to our target users. One such insight included:
“Something that might be cool would be like designing little like UX stickers that like you could just like stick around campus because I’ve seen that around it. And that’s a good way to, like, get the message out in a way that’s relatively doesn’t require that much work.” — Current UX Freshman
This idea led to a final “actionable item” in one scenario which would send the freshman or CODO to the studio to pick up some designated UX swag.
Limitation
While the testing and evaluations provided valuable insight, it is important to note a limitation. As this project is a collaborative effort between an entire class, our section assumes other aspects presented by other groups were successful. Therefore, we assume that we can present this video via Slack or email, as the students are accustomed to being communicated via these channels. Finally, as our prototype was drawings, rather than an actual video, this provided initial confusion for our tester. However, once we thoroughly explained the idea, our tester was able to picture it and ultimately, excited about the idea.
Future Work
One of the biggest benefits of this immersive branching video is once it is recorded, it can be utilized for many more years and cohorts to come. Additionally, since the video is segmented, if changes were needed to be made to this video, it would be easy to adjust one segment of it rather than creating an entirely new video. For example, as the club UXD changes its board members yearly, this segment would need to be updated regularly. However, this does not affect the overall video and would be a small modification which is easily changed.
While we are confident in this initial design, some further iteration enhancements include:
→Depending on the final platform the video is published on, there could be ways to track which branch is the most or least interacted with and which “actionable items” are completed. This analytical insight would allow for modifications and enhancements to create content that is most beneficial to the freshman or CODO.
→Will be for different user groups, such as: in-state freshmen, outstate freshmen, international students, and CODOs. Based on these different user groups, there could be branches for these specific users. As the current video is a proposal for all students, there is a risk of detachment due to not relating to any of the answers, the situation or do not relate demographically to the scenarios that are presented.
→Along with creating this video, it would be beneficial to talk to other majors to help film and edit the videos. In addition to providing a good opportunity to communicate and work with non-designers, it would also provide insight from other Purdue students/staff as to insights they may have into the freshmen or CODO demographics.
Conclusion
By creating an immersive branching video, many fears, questions, and other feelings first year UX students may be feeling, will be answered and acknowledged. While a real student version of the video (rather than animation) will likely lead to more engagement, this overall low-maintenance but highly effective video can assist with the enculturation of students.
Overall, this project was challenging and engaging. I was able to enhance my leadership skills through effectively communicating, encouraging and leading a team. Furthermore, I was able to work with my entire cohort and assist in leading a team of 12 designers.
Reference
Godfrey, E. (2008). University education: Enculturation, assimilation or just passengers on the bus. In 11th Pacific Rim First Year in Higher Education Conference. Hobart, Australia. Retrieved from http://www. fyhe.qut.edu.au.
