Let me do the planning
I worked with a team of three to observe, research, design, and set up a mobile web app at an Interaction Design course at UC San Diego.
Our project application is called, All Set. We aim to help people to find a right way to be organized when learning because an unorganized learning plan is a waste of unnecessary time and is an obstacle to efficient learning. In the team, I was mainly responsible for the design of the user interaction page, the establishment of the development plan, and the realization of the interaction page we need with html. I also contributed to A / B testing and collected user feedback to make improvements.
At the end of the course, we presented our app in a poster form to the industry panel. And we received praise from many people.
Many college students and young adults spend a lot of time on making an organized learning plan, but most of them fail to follow the plan. However, many do not know how to arrange a suitable plan for each task, and instead of addressing the problems right away, they just keep repeating the same mistake and lead to inefficient learning.
After reviewing and comparing the functionalities of apps with similar target audiences, we have summarized some valuable functionalities that are worth learning.
The first step of our design process was to conduct need-finding and research. We decided to center our observations around the design brief for Removing Barriers to Learning. Specifically, we wanted to explore how technology can remove obstacles that prevent learning of any kind. To find out the kind of obstacles that people face while in the process of learning, we observed the learning process of our three participants, and predicted that the use of technological devices would be a distraction obstacle during the learning process. We have observed each interview when they were following their schedule and see what might disturb them.
To summarize our need-finding and visualize the problem that our user might deal with. We created three storyboards. Each captures the different user’s journey and experience through three separate organizing or planning issues.
Our team started our designs at low-fidelity paper prototyping which allow us to receive feedback and make simple adjustments.
In our paper prototypes, we visualized each important function of our application in a simple form. After we conduct heuristic evaluations of our paper prototyping and gather quality feedback from our user, we reconsider the way that we promote the function and demonstrate an ideal scenario when users will use our application with a one minute video. The video illustrates the interaction between users and our project application in daily life.
.png)
Core Goal:
A learner needs a way to organize their work because an unorganized learning plan wastes unnecessary time and is an obstacle to learning.
As our ideas evolved, we made some changes to the UI design. In contrast with the previous paper prototype listing different options on the home page, we put the options at the bottom of the page this time to make the interface cleaner and space-efficient. We also replaced most of the options with icons to make the interface look simpler.
We have noticed that there is a group of people in our lives who have a very large number of things to do every day. The overcrowded schedule makes it difficult for them to balance the time required for different things, causing them to forget or not arrange enough time to complete a certain task.
Some others have poor time management skills and are used to waiting until the last minute to do their homework, which might cause not having enough time to finish. The above issues are identified as barriers to learning. Our application aims to remove these barriers by helping our potential users to properly arrange and balance the things they need to do by reminding the upcoming deadline so as to avoid users forgetting something.
Users need an App to help in organizing their learning. It could be a college student who is taking multiple classes, and has various assignments every week. The app will allow the user to record the assignments as well as give a tentative schedule to complete them. The user’s motivation for using the app is to make their learning more efficient rather than wasting time trying to figure out which assignment is due when and where to start from.
It is difficult for users to persist in completing the specified tasks if they cannot check the progress of the tasks in real time. Therefore, besides listing the assignments, there should be something that visualize the progress of each assignment which will improve the user's visual experience with this application.
The calendar is a way for users to view a longer-term plan. Users want to be able to view the overall changes from day to month, month to year (from small to large) through the calendar. Therefore, I decided to use the calendar to show weekly or some long-term planning arrangements, and mark the corresponding time points with special symbols to remind users of these arrangements.
Users feel that they don't have user freedom to plan for the schedule for different date, especially for plan for me page. Therefore, I optimize the process with a slidable date bar and a plus sign which make the schedule planning more efficient and accessible for every user.
For our google analytics test, we test how easy the person will click on the delete button by mistake among 2 different. When the user clicks "NO" following the message "Do you want to delete this assignment", it means the user has accidentally clicked on the delete button. If the user has fewer mistakes on version B, it means that this design fulfills the error prevention heuristic.
There were 13 total experiment sessions (users).
Our recruitment process was going to the library and asking students if they were willing to take part in user testing. We did that because our target demographic is students who are learning. By asking students in the library, we are also able to get students from different majors which would not create a bias towards the results
Null Hypothesis:There is no difference in clicking the "delete button" between the two designs.
The sum of formula (O-E)^2/E Chi-square value is 3.299.
Using the chi-square test, the resultant p-value that we calculated was 0.069. With the significance value at 0.05, we do not have sufficient evidence to reject the hypothesis that there is no difference between the two designs or Version B performs better than Version A. If I can get more data from different users, I would be able to see a significant difference. But for now, I don’t have that many users yet.
In feedback from those users, they seem to prefer Version B (Right-Side) which promotes a simple and clear feeling.
Fira Sansa provides the feeling of Concise ，delight and formal. I selected semi - Bold and Medium as my main font version because each character appears fuller and takes less space between the characters giving a fuller look and good readability. It fits best for mobile device.
White linear as the background color is selected to contrast with some light-colored components. Also, Dark green and Cement ash provided a sense of refreshing and also emphasize our key theme: Suitable.
