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IxD Capstone Project

Overview		Challenge		Role
For my final year capstone project, I wanted to explore the issues of remote teaching in online courses during the pandemic. This project applied the culmination of what I learned in my three years in the Interaction Design program and is a demonstration of my UX, UI, and User Research skills.		Teaching online has its challenges and in general, has many different problems regarding the delivery of content, engaging students, and the mental health concerns of learning online. With synchronous learning being a primary mode of delivery, this puts additional stress on the professor due to the challenges mentioned above. Professors/instructors need a way to avoid pandemic fatigue because it is affecting their teaching and the engagement of students.		My role in this project encompasses everything from UX, UI, and User Research. This project was done along with my professor, who acted as an advisor also.

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Starting off the year with a thesis

In my 4th year in the Interaction Design program, we have to do thesis projects that cumulate all the learnings that we went through in the program. Although, I think of this project as more of an exploration and learning of the topic that I’ve chosen. My role for this project encompasses everything from ideation to research to create the final prototype. My goal for this exploration is to focus more on the design process and less on the final solution.

The topic or space that I’ve chosen was teaching in post-secondary remote online classes. I was very inspired to understand my professors and see if I could contribute or help them in any way. The pandemic hit them hard and I was very curious about how they felt teaching online classes when the pandemic started until today.

A common occurrence with my classes these days

The process

To structure the project, I used the tried and true Double Diamond Design Process. I wanted to use this design process to give me the chance to think in each phase of the project and set myself for success. Using the design process provided a focus on research, which I wanted to do to understand what professors go through when they teach online. This also provided a good idea of what I needed to do, how to do it, and what to look for when doing research.

Planning and assumptions

Having used an established process, I needed to start planning on what things I needed to do for the project. Doing this in 7 weeks is a huge challenge and I had to plan every step to ensure that I hit specific deadlines and not be behind on work (and other courses). Most importantly, I needed to set assumptions on what I thought professors are currently going through and this became important as I needed to prove these assumptions through my primary and secondary research.

I also looked into what design principles and psychological factors to use as they were the guidelines in the project. They were things that I must keep in mind when creating my solution and during the design process. Without these, I would feel very much lost!

In addition to this, I worked on initial design research to find that focus within the remote teaching space. Doing design research activities like Hills Statements, Needs Statements, and such.

This provided me a way to narrow down what I am trying to do in this project, which got me to:

Instructors/professors need a way to avoid pandemic fatigue because it is affecting their teaching and the engagement of students.

Research methodologies and findings

As with any project, primary research and secondary research were done. My focus was on primary research because I needed to understand how professors felt directly. With this in mind, I performed interviews with:

• Interaction Design professors
• Teacher’s Assistants

I was very interested in interviewing TA’s because since they were students too, I assumed that the experience was very different compared to a professor teaching an official class. Although this was quite different after doing analysis using affinity mapping and other activities.

Through the interviews, some of the findings were:

• Professors and TA’s have adapted to teaching online classes: This made a lot of sense as at the beginning of the pandemic, stress was at an all-time high due to overcoming challenges such as changing course material to adopt online learning.
• 3 out of 4 interviewees mentioned that they felt isolated due to students not engaging or turning on their cameras: The importance of getting visual feedback is very much critical for professors and even teachers because they need that feedback from students if they are understanding the content or not
• Even today, there are still challenges but professors and TA’s had created strategies or used tools that would facilitate that feedback to them. Things like polls, online multiplayer web games (i.e one professor uses trivia to engage the class), or even using breakout rooms to talk to students individually or in small groups.

“At the end of the day, it is up to the student to engage and we can’t force them”

This quote from one professor that I interviewed hit me as I realized as a student, this was true. Student engagement was the key as the work being done by the professor is a lot. From my primary and secondary research, professors take twice as long to prepare for online classes because of factors like technology and course content. This changed the direction of the project as it isn’t all about the professor anymore but instead the student. With this in mind, a new project statement was created:

Professors/Instructors need a way to improve student engagement in an online class because it provides a meaningful connection between the course content and professor/instructor.

Ideation and prototyping

With a new direction, I looked back into my research data which resulted in looking at the technology used for online classes. Such things that I looked at were:

I considered a lot of different solutions and possible platforms

I looked at these solutions because I wanted to create some level of intimacy similar to an in-person class experience. The idea of looking around seeing your classmates in person, being in a classroom environment, and even looking at the professor, can create different emotions in the student. I wanted to simulate and create that immersion, but I recognized that it would be very difficult to replicate a physical environment to a digital environment.

It was very challenging because I was trying to put a measurement on student engagement. This brought me to the idea of how Zoom is frequently used for online classes. Through my observational research, I saw that the level of student engagement was high when doing discussions. One student would speak, and this would snowball to more students talking. This is very similar to in-class learning where students are afraid to speak up unless one of their peers does. It creates a comfortable environment to ask questions or say your opinion.

I saw this as an opportunity to use what Zoom has called “Zoom apps” and I found it possible to use the raw data being outputted by Zoom to track microphone and video duration in a call or online class. This was when I started working on my prototype:

Sketches

Initial prototype and user testing!

With my prototype, I wanted to show data visually because I wanted the professor or user to view the data easily. By showing it in a visualization, the professor can find trends like perhaps on a certain time of the lecture that student engagement is very low. By identifying trends or patterns, the professor can take action on the problem such as creating discussions or activities that would engage the student in the course content.

Zoom app

The dashboard with data visualization

Further feedback was needed so I decided to test this with a few professors and TA’s in the form of interviews. The mock-ups were shown and a simple Q & A was done to gather feedback on whether they would use the tool or not. Some of the findings were:

• Feedback was generally positive and professors and TA’s found it very interesting using Zoom as a form of tracking student engagement
• One very important point was that this data isn’t indicative of a student’s performance
• The importance of humanizing the data and how different professors feel about this data, as it could induce anxiety – Depending on the person.

Improving on the prototype

Using the feedback from user testing, several changes were made for the final prototype:

• Addition of customization buttons, so the Professor or teacher can turn on and off different parts of the app. Being able to turn certain aspects on and off can decrease anxiety when teaching, especially if the Professor is new to teaching.
• There wasn’t much iteration for this part of the app as the feedback was generally good and didn’t require too much change to the overall UI.

For the dashboard, several changes were made:

• Making the overall graph customizable with colour, type, and also what data it is showing. From the feedback, the want for customizing different graphs made it easier for them to find patterns or trends with various types of graphs.
• Moving some aspects of the dashboard so it reads from high-level information to more granular (detailed) data. This would make it easier for the professor to read high-level information easily.
• Improving the overall dashboard by “humanizing” the dashboard and addition of graphics so it is friendly to the user. The rationale for this was that having just plain data can be daunting, so adding certain things like graphics and making the data-friendly would make it easier for the professor to view.
• Adjusting colours and various text. Using red wasn’t particularly great because, from testing, one professor mentioned that it can signify danger or something really bad from the student.

Final prototype

Zoom app

The dashboard with data visualization

Reflecting on the prototype

At the end of this thesis, I decided not to pursue this topic of remote teaching and my prototype any further (instead I focused on accessibility, which is another thing!). My reasoning for this is that teaching remotely has so many factors and complexities in engaging students. From my interviews, I saw that:

• Student engagement in classes isn’t an online problem but rather a general teaching problem. Online classes amplify the issue further due to the environment that students are in.
• The environment that most students are in when doing online learning is very much not suited for synchronous learning. This is because there are many reasons why students don’t turn on their cameras or not participate in class, it could be that they don’t have a microphone or they don’t want other peers to see the room that they are living in.
• A digital solution that encompasses an experience that is similar or close to in-person learning is simply impossible with today’s technology. It is very difficult to replicate an in-class experience because current digital tools cannot replicate the intimacy that a teacher-student has.

Even though the prototype isn’t perfect, I do admit that it isn’t a great idea either. There are so many issues with visualizing data like this as it can produce wrong intentions to a student or create a misunderstanding. Although, I learned a lot and the most important thing that I’ll take away from this is my uttermost respect for teachers and professors teaching in this pandemic.

The takeaways

Applying what I learned in my courses

Through the three years in the Interaction Design programs, I learned the fundamentals of design to user-centered design to understanding how to design for people. I realized the skills that I gained through my courses, this project was a test of those skills and also challenging them. I found that I have still much to learn like my user research skills and applying design principles and psychological factors into my designs. Not only this but I continue to learn a lot about myself as a designer and what I can improve on next time around.

Pushing myself as a designer

Sometimes I question myself as a designer if my process is correct or even if my solution makes sense or not. What made me move forward for this project was pushing myself to create something – Even if it was terrible. The realization that at times our ideas can be bad, didn’t come into my head until that point in time. By pushing forward and laying out what I had, in terms of my research and ideas, I saw a path that I was able to go towards. I think that not thinking about failure, not worrying about the overall design, and simply just “doing it” helped me focus on the prototype and eventually got me moving to finish the project overall.

Designing for others

This project challenged me, not only as a designer but as an individual as well. It taught me how I can design for others, but the most important thing is using empathy to understand the other side. Throughout the project, I kept the user in focus, and understanding what they felt when they are teaching online was very important to me. I felt what they felt when I was asking my professors questions and started realizing as a student, that engagement during class was critical. I could never forget this feeling and it’s something that I look to bring forward to my design career.

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