About

This was a group project, and my team members were Anusha Chitranshi, Nishil Faldu, and Athulya Ganesh. We were tasked with designing a set of interfaces and interactions for a new kind of classroom that has:

1. One large, high-resolution digital wall at the front of the room

2. Digital touch tables

3. Personal devices brought in by students and faculty, including laptops, tablets, mobile phones, smartwatches, and AR-capable glasses

4. Sensors/microphones that capture mid-air gestures, speech, and facial expressions

Presenting Content to Students

Pre-Design

Instructions

Design an interface that will enable faculty to present course content to students in the Classroom of the Future during class.  

• Consider where they would want to present this information, given that they have many choices in the room:

  • Would they present content solely on the large physical display at the front of the room?  It is a large display, where would they place this content?

  • Would they share content with the touch-tables?  Where on the touch tables?

  • Would they share content with student devices? 

  • Would they share information in AR? 

• When would they create this content: Would they design and curate the content they plan to present in advance?  Would they want to draw, sketch, or type live during the class?   

• What kinds of content might they share?  Just PowerPoint or PDFs?  Or other kinds of content- 3D models, videos, interactive applications, interactive data visualizations? 

• How would they share this content? From their personal computers and devices?  From a teacher's station connected to the cloud?  

• What kinds of control would they need over the room?

To answer these questions:

1. Sample the real world to understand what professors currently share with students, and how they share it.   

• • Use sketching to capture ways in which professors currently present content to students.

  • Use photographs to document the set-up of current UC classrooms, and the kinds of content professors share (please only photograph professors and students with their permission)

  • Capture real material presented by professors in their classes- both slideshow and chalkboard lectures

  • Aim to capture at least 10 sketches or photographs

  • Identify themes in what you have captured that can be translated into codes.  Apply these codes to your captured content. 

  • What did you learn?  Summarize your findings.  Include the captured images, your process for arriving at themes and codes, and your final results.  

2. Consider how professors could share their content in this new kind of classroom

• • What does it mean to have a larger and higher resolution display for presenting content to students? 

  • What role could personal devices or touchtables play in how professors present things?  

3. Write 3 short scenarios involving an imagined professor.  What classes do they teach?  What kinds of content do they need to present? 

Our Work

Flipped Classrooms, Student Interactions

Pre-Design

Instructions

After the teacher shares content, it needs to be presented within a display UI- on the large display, on the touch tables, on personal devices, and in AR.  Also, imagine teachers want to do more than lecture- they want to give students opportunities during class to do active work.  Sometimes this will involve:

• • solving problems independently and sharing answers, 

  • solving problems in small groups,

  • discussing a topic in small groups

  • reading an article or watching a video and preparing for a discussion

In these discussions, students may create:

• • handwritten solutions to the problem

  • sketches or drawings

  • typed responses

  • other material

Students may also give presentations and share their work- like our class presentations. 

How can our classroom make it easier for students to share things?  

There are 3 interfaces to design: 

1. Design the UI where the teacher's content is shared- for large displays, or other in-room devices.

2. Design a UI for students that allows them to create and share content with their class.  Sometimes this UI will involve them doing work independently, and other times they will do this work in small groups.  Consider that they may want to do this work using handwriting, sketches, drawings, typing, multiple choice responses, and sharing their screen. 

3. Add to your teacher UI features that allow them to assign activities to students, view their responses, and select some (or all) of the responses to show to the class.  

Assume that students have a mix of different personal devices (laptops, phones, tablets) and touch tables.  

Sample the real world and find 10 examples of active work during classes and examples where students share their work. 

Our Work

Interactions Through Touch, Mid-Air Gestures, Speech, Mobile Devices, and AR

Instructions

1. Design a set of novel interactions for students and teachers with the displays and interfaces using: multi-touch gestures, mid-air gestures, and speech.  

• Discuss within your group when would students or teachers interact with these interfaces using multi-touch gestures, mid-air gestures or speech.   

• For each interaction type, describe a scenario where they might be useful. 

• Elicit interactions:  find a friend or work with another member of your team

  • Simulate interactions with content by placing examples and sketches on a physical table or wall.  

  • Identify actions that the user may want to perform with this content. 

  • List what you capture. Take notes on your preferences, and envisioned interactions. 

• For each interaction type, create a narrative sketch (which can include hybrid sketching techniques) to show your chosen scenario.  In your sketch, show the user, the device, the UI on the device, the context, and their actions in the world.   You should aim to include sufficient visual detail in how the UI behaves and how interactions take place so that a team could implement your envisioned UI and interaction approach. 

2. Consider Augmented Reality in more depth.  Suppose every student in the classroom had lightweight AR glasses.  What would this mean for the classroom?  Design one scenario for AR in teaching.  Create a narrative sketch (which can include hybrid sketching techniques) to show your chosen scenario.  In your sketch, show the user, the content they are viewing in AR, the UI in AR, and their interactions with this content or other actions in the world.  It should have sufficient detail that would allow you to implement this experience.  

• • Translate these findings into a set of narrative sketches, which step through your envisioned interactions.  Hybrid sketches may be helpful, to illustrate how these actions would take place in the real context on campus. You should aim to include sufficient visual detail in how the UI behaves and how interactions take place so that a team could implement your envisioned UI and interaction approach. 

Our Work