Overview

Design Thinking

Empathize

To empathize with our target user group, elementary students, we conducted interviews and surveys to create an empathy map. We also created an empathy map for elementary school teachers, who were the secondary users. From this, we learned how important it is to gather the direct words, thoughts, feelings, and actions of primary and secondary users to understand the necessary scope of the design problem. This way we center our problem and solution around human needs from the very beginning, allowing us to ensure that the final product is relevant and useful for the users.

Define

With a combination of the empathy mapping and literature research we developed a solid contextual understanding of the design problem. It was important to combine empathy mapping with existing literature because the empathy maps only show a portion of the picture. Conducting literature research allowed us to uncover common trends and gaps in knowledge that we could pinpoint and solve with our solution, and ensure that we are solving the direct cause of the problem instead of treating the symptom.

Ideate

In the ideation phase, we conducted market research and applied the findings from the empathy maps and literature research to create an affinity map and develop key research insights. 

Through these tools, we learned how important it is to gather information before thinking of different design solutions so that we do not: 

• Repeat specific functions that were proved to be ineffective through market or literature research 

• Include functions that were not mentioned as important by users

• Select fonts and color palettes that do not appeal to the users

Instead, with the help of these tools we can design a solution that can:

• Appeal to the primary and secondary users through informed font and color choices based on market research

• Include functions that address concerns mentioned by users

• Address the gaps in knowledge found from literature research

• Introduce new functions that were missing from existing products from market research

Prototype

The prototype phase helped us create a tangible visualization of our solution and taught us the importance of splitting the prototypes into different fidelities to address any gaps and inconsistencies. By starting off with the low-fidelity prototypes, we were able to figure out the general layout and flow of our solution without needing to spend a lot of time on the specific design aspects. It also allowed us to embrace failure where we could see what works and what doesn't. The high-fidelity prototypes are where we learned how to incorporate user needs into a polished product while also implementing the different features we developed through our key research insights. 

Test

For our team, the testing phase required the most iteration because it revealed previously overlooked needs. Here we were able to test our low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes with our peers and we learned how to incorporate feedback and iterate over the designs to address these needs while still keeping the overall design of the product consistent with user needs.

Challenges

Complexity

When creating our low-fidelity prototypes, we realized that the scope of our design solution was more complicated than we realized due to two different interfaces based on if the elementary school student (primary user) was using the application or if the elementary school teacher (secondary user) was using the application. 

This is where we realized that creating low-fidelity prototypes is important instead of going directly to high-fidelity because we can first map out and see the amount of screens we need to design to understand the scope of the overall solution.

Lack of Access to Primary User Group

Although our design solution is primarily for elementary school students, our team was unable to get access to this population. This made it difficult for us to fully understand the first-hand experience a child would go through when exploring our solution. Instead, we relied on the empathy map, market and literature research to get an understanding of what our primary users need and what works well for them. 

Collaboration

To ensure consistency across all screen in the high-fidelity prototype, all team members needed to work closely together. This also required effective communication and meetings outside of lectures.

Changes to Ideas

Teacher Dashboard

Our team had initially created screens for the teacher dashboard in the low-fidelity prototype since they were our secondary user group but realized that due to the complexity of our design solution, creating the high-fidelity prototypes for teacher dashboard would increase the scope and time needed to complete our solution. So, we decided to prioritize improving the designs of the main flow, the student dashboard, by not designing the screens for the teacher dashboard. This allowed us to stay focused on finalizing the main parts of our design solution for our primary user group.

Simplify Student Dashboard

During a testing session, one of our peers gave us feedback that the initial design of the student dashboard was overwhelming, leading to confusion on where they need to start or press to navigate to the intended page. This feedback made us realize that because we as designers have all the context and background from the research as well as detailed understanding of where each element on a page will lead to, we run into the risk of overcomplicating the screen with too much information. To address the feedback, we reduced the amount of elements on the dashboard from six to four. This feedback also helped us realize that some elements on the dashboard were repetitive and could be combined into a single element for simplicity.

Possible Improvements

Easier Navigation

Currently, if a user is on a page other than the dashboard, the only button to navigate out of that page is to press the 'Back' button in the top left corner. This may cause users to become lost within the application because it is hard to tell where they are with only a 'Back' button they can press to try and backtrack back to the dashboard. 

Including a navigation bar at the top could help users ground themselves on where they are within the application, leading to an improvement in overall satisfaction with the experience provided by our solution. 

Unique Character

Allowing the user to create and customize a character that is unique to them can help make the application feel more personalized and engaging. One way to gamify this element is by awarding the user a new item after they successfully complete a game or collect a certain number of achievements/trophies.

Interaction with Other Students

Desiging a way for users to visit each other's town could make the application more engaging since users can interact with each other. It could also allow users to share their interests so students can expand their library with more books.