Limitations

Assumptions

When designing our solution, we made some assumptions about our primary user group that they:

• Can read basic words

• Understand the basics of navigating a digital interface

• Have experience with digital annotation tools such as underlining, highlighting, and note-taking

• Are able to hear 

• Are allowed to use this application by their parent(s) or gaurdian(s)

Situations Our Design May Not Work Well

If someone from our primary user group does not meet the assumptions listed above, our design solution will be unable to provide the full experience and functions. For example, if a student is unable to read basic words and does not have experience with navigating a digital interface, the design solution is ineffective because the student is unable to use the application. Another example is if the student is hard of hearing, the audio element that reads the book to the user will be unhelpful and unused. Additionally, if the parent or gaurdian of the student does not allow their child to use this application, the features of our design solution are cut off from that specfiic user.

Trade-off

One trade-off our team had to consider was whether to make the reading experience fully digital or make it in a hybrid form where the student might have a physical book and the solution provides digital feedback. We ultimately decided to make the reading experience fully digital so that all students can have an equal opportunity at accessing books to read. If students did have to obtain a physical copy of the book to utilize our solution, it may decrease the effectivness of our design solution because there is a limit to how many students can access the same physical book. Making the books digital in the application solves this problem and the book can be read to the child so they can read along with the audio, which can strengthen their vocabulary and speaking skills.

Future Plans

Design Teacher Dashboard

Since the designs for the student dashboard are finalized, we plan on creating high-fidelity prototypes for the teacher dashboard. After the high-fidelity prototypes are designed, we will need to test them and iterate over the design to ensure they are intuitive and consistent with our overall design solution.

Add More Literacy Games

Currently our design solution only has word recognition games where the user can select which words are a certain part of speech such as a verb. By adding a variety of games, it will help increase the excitement and engagement for users. From our literature research, it was also mentioned that many existing applications similar to our design solution have repetitive games that decrease engagement overtime for users. So our plan is to research the different types of games that can be implemented into our solution so that users don't feel boredom or repetition from games.

Improve Navigation

Our team plans to implement a navigation bar in the design solution to help users orient themselves within the digital environment. By conducting competitive analysis, we will determine which navigation bar design is the most effective in helping users navigate through the system and we will also ensure that the navigation bar design is consistent with other elements within our current solution.