Blackboard Mobile App Concept
My Role: UX Researcher | Duration: 2 Day| Project Status: Finished
Project Overview
Today’s education has changed drastically in the past few months. Everything is now remote and many challenges have been effecting the way students learn. This case study evaluates the current mobile application, Blackboard. We found that many students found it difficult to reach their professors on an individual level. My team and I were able to conduct user interviews to aid in researching the issue at hand. We found that many remote learners found it difficult to connect with the faculty compared to when students would be able to directly ask professors questions in class. This lead us to discover, define, iterate and design our additional feature to Blackboard. We hope that future iterations of our feature be implemented as a solution.
Our Problem Space
As concerns for the health and safety of the community to continue, educational systems still require employees and students to work remotely. This lead to the development of our research goal to improve personal and professional communication during remote learning.
UX Framework Process
Our process involved the Double Diamond framework. In the first diamond, we focus on designing the right thing for users. We look to find what their current challenges are while researching data followed by synthesizing that data. With the data, we are then able to re-define our problem statements, craft personas and make sure that we’re solving the user’s needs.
In the second diamond, we are focused on designing things right. We ideate and design our ideas to iterate. After iteration, we are able to test and learn how to better our designs.
My team and I began by defining our problem through user interviews. Through our research, we were able to contact 15 users throughout the whole process. We synthesized our data in every round which lead our initial feature sketches. Through our usability testings on our low-fidelity prototypes, and then again during our mid-fidelity prototypes, we were able to conduct our case study to creating a better experience during remote learning.
Stating our Problems
My team and I came up with a few assumptions:
- Students have difficulty tracking assignments
- Students will need a way to converse with classmates and contact professors
- Students will need to adjust and balance work and school life
Our assumptions lead to our prediction:
Hypothesis: Students need help with tracking assignments, staying organized, and finding a way to stay connected with others while learning from home/remote learning.
Our Initial Problem Statement:
How might we provide students with a remote learning experience that mimics a more “in-person” environment, while helping them stay organized and confident in managing their assignments?
Goal of Research
We set out to research how to improve remote communication in the remote learning environment. We interviewed 5 experienced remote learning users who gave us insights on how they felt, what applications they were already using, and most importantly what challenges they came across. We were able to validate part of our hypothesis.
Methodology
Through user interviews, we were able to gather data on our users. A user interview is a UX research method in which a researcher asks one user questions about a topic of interest (in our case, remote learning) with the goal of learning about the topic. We discussed with 5 users detailing their behaviors and how it’s been effecting their learning process.
Synthesizing
After our user interviews, we were able to categorize our insights on our users’ behaviors and thoughts. Our Affinity Diagram aided in gathering data to organize them into themed groups based on their relationships to each other.
Findings
Our key takeaway is that users need a way to directly communicate with their professors.
Through our insights, we were able to create “I” statements that helps define our user need statement. This aids in summarizing who are particular user is, user’s need, and why the need is important to the user.
- Insight 1: Lack of Socialization
↪ “I need opportunities to network and create connections” - Insight 2: Communication Issues
↪ “It is difficult to reach and contact my professors on an individual level”
Main themes pictured above: Lack of Socialization, Communication Issues, Easy Feature Use, Lack of Hands On, Notification Benefits
Persona
Our insights guided in our creation of our persona. Personas are our fictional representation of our target audience that assist in understanding our users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals.
Meet Tolu!
She’s a third year college student aiming to learn efficiently during this time. She needs a space in which to communicate with professors but she has learned that professors are not as responsive as often as in-person.
Revised Problem Statement
INSIGHT: We found that users need a way to communicate with their instructors.
PERSONA: Our intended audience are users who are remote learning and using the Blackboard system for their courses.
PROBLEM: Users find difficulty navigating the mobile app and finding a way to contact their instructors.
GOAL: Finding a way to provide users tools that aid communication while keeping their work organized through the remote learning experience.
Revised Problem Statement:
Due to the current pandemic, Tolu must resort to remote learning. How might we provide tools to aid communication, organization, and a balanced work life throughout her remote learning experience?
From Insights to Feature
Insight
“It is difficult to reach and contact my professors on an individual level”
Contact Feature
Design Process
In this phase, we set out to design, prototype, test and iterate our ideas. In this Design phase in the UX process, we created sketches, wireframes, prototypes and multiple user testings. Through this iterative process, we are able to integrate our CONTACT feature into the Blackboard mobile app. This feature allows for students and instructors to contact each other via instant messaging through the app. It provides an easier and more convenient way to contact each other and build connections.
Design Studio: Sketching + Concepts
In our early ideations, we needed to design the contact feature and integrate it to the current Blackboard application.
Shown above are my initial sketches on designing this new feature. We kept in mind our persona’s goal to find a way to contact their instructors while remote learning. The early design concepts vary in the new feature’s location.
Initial User Testing: First Round
In our first round of user testing, we interviewed 5 users in-person and asked them to test out our paper wireframe flow. We gave our users one task and after completing the task, we ended the session with a few questions to gather some feedback.
Task: Find a way to deliver a note to your Intro to Health professor to get an instant response.
*Feature highlighted in blue
Findings
We found that many users struggled to directly complete our task given to them. Our users frequently mis-clicked in our Menu bar.
Design Iterations: First Round
In our first design, we kept Blackboard’s sidebar menu screen and added our new feature. We then designed new screen flows that were similar to other screens to keep the Blackboard application as simple and cohesive as possible.
Takeaways
Many of our users mis-clicked and were not able to identify some of the terminology used in the first round.
User Testing: Second Round
We advanced our designs based on our results from the first round of testing. We noted that many of our users found that it was initially confusing to find where to locate the contacts due to the overcrowded Sidebar Menu. We also changed the mislabelled errors.
In the second round of testing, we created mid-fidelity screen flow. We gave them the same task but used Maze (online testing website) to conduct unmoderated testings.
Mid-fidelity Screens (Annotations/Screen Flow)
Findings
We found that many users spent less time finishing the task compared to the first round of testing.
Comparing our Usability Tests
Through our testings we were able to compare Round 1 and Round 2 of testing.
Findings
Through testings we noticed:
• Users spent less time on the task in Round 2
• The success rate of Round 1 & Round 2 were the same
• Users found Round 2 easier
Final Prototype
Link to Figma Prototype:
https://www.figma.com/proto/WOvVKVtDpl7z32PLoQMAwc/Mid-Fi-Blackboard-App?node-id=25%3A73&viewport=-50%2C-240%2C0.6082679629325867&scaling=scale-down
Next Steps
The benefit of the UX Lifecycle framework allows us to constantly enhance our designs through multiple stages.
Final Recommendations
• Relabel “Contact” to another label (i.e Instructors/Faculty)
• Create a home page as soon as users open the app
Our feedback indicates that many users would find this new Contact feature to be useful while remote learning. Our users were able to navigate through the app smoothly and expressed hope that this design would one day be added to the Blackboard app. With more usability testing and a finalized iteration, this could be the start of a new communication app for students and professors all over.
