My Desk
My desk is a website that allows ECT students to find and track their assignments easily at a centralized hub.
(Updating)
Team Project Fall 2023
Team
Sara Jakubowicz
Xixi Tian
Kathy Xie
Salome Yoryoliami
My Role
We collaborated in every phase of the project. But some of my key contributions include:
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managed affinity diagram;
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changed our direction of design
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designed the "tasks" and "calendar" tabs of the website.
Overview
The Challenge
Students in the Education, Communication, and Technology program in New York University (ECT students) are overwhelmed by the amount of platform navigation that they have to perform both among and within platforms in order to find all their assignments, which leads to frustration, waste of time on homework finding, and risks of missing assignments which impact students' learning experience.
The Outcome
My Desk is our solution to the problem, which is a website that functions as a one-stop centralized hub for ECT students to find and track their assignments.
Research
We utilized both quantitative and qualitative researches, with a heavier focus on qualitative ones. We performed 5 interviews and over 20 surveys.
5 Interviews
qualitative
20+ Surveys
qualitative
quantitative
Interview
We did 5 interviews, asking first year ECT students about their daily experiences in the program, and having them elaborate on the difficulties they face. We found out 2 shared theme among the problems that students face:
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overwhelming amount of navigation to find homework;
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feeling of isolated and the wish to build a stronger community.
Survey
We created a survey on the 2 themes we found during the interview and received over 20 feedbacks, which is almost half of the program population. Based on the result, we decided to focus on the problem of overwhelming amount of navigation in finding assignments.
Analysis
Affinity Diagram
Across the project, we used affinity diagram to keep track, organize, and analyze our findings after each step. It has led us to the key findings regarding the main problems that ECT students are facing.
Below is a snapshot of our affinity diagram.
Persona
User Needs Statement
First-year ECT students need to be better informed about assignment information because they feel overwhelmed by the amount of platform navigation
Ideation & Design
Brainstorm
We used 2 methods to brainstorm solutions: rotating notes and sketching.
Rotating Notes
By coming up with ideas and then rotate to be inspired by others' ideas, we expanded our thoughts and possilibities.
Sketching
We sketched our ideas to further visualize and get inspired.
After diverging and converging brainstorming, we concentrated on the following 3 ideas:
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Plug-in/extension with virtual assistant and recognition of deadlines (automatically adds to calendar);
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Assignment Hub;
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Collaborative open-source platform.
And we decided to go with assignment hub, because it required least student work and aligns best with our user need statement.
Brainstorm Summary
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Usability Test
2 usability tests were conducted. We used rainbow sheet to keep track of our findings, and made the following key improvements based on user feedbacks.
Before
In a task asking students to find all assignments for a specific class in the next week, students experienced difficulty in finding the "course" filter.
After
We made the "course" section larger on the home page to make the way to check assignments by courses obvious. We further added a tutorial that shows students the function of main filters.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Reflection
Take Aways
In this project, we have learnt the importance to focus on the problem rather than the solution during the research phase. We have also discovered the importance to focus on our users without bringing in too many irrelevant stakeholders and forgetting who we are designing for. During the design phase, we learnt some Figma skills, including the use of component and several other flow tips. We have also learnt that low fidelity prototype should not be disregarded, and that it should be the base for usability test.
Next Steps
If we have more time, we might do more usability tests, and update the visual style of our product to have a more modern look.