Connecting online classmates

StudyBuddy is a mobile application that aims to connect students with other classmates to bridge the gap in online learning and create authentic online classmate connections.

My Role

Researcher
Lead Designer
Team Of 3

Platform

Mobile

Tools & Methods

Figma
Google Suite
Zoom
Primary Research
Secondary Research

Duration

13 Weeks

What is the problem?

Covid-19 forced college students to attend online classes which results in poor classmate socialization due to lack of classmate interaction after zoom classes which may lead certain students to not get the help they need in that course.

Target group goals?

Increasing classmate interaction among college students who have or are currently attending online synchronous lectures on Zoom.

Research Process

Secondary Research

Secondary research provides our team with larger data and research points that summarize the problems pertaining to college students in zoom classrooms and the need to amplify classmate connections after zoom classes.

Study apps may help with social interaction (Sun et al., 2017)
Students who take more online classes reported lower levels of collaborative learning. (Dumford & Miller, 2018)
College students need to learn these skills of online collaboration in preparation for entering the workforce (Moore, 2016)

Primary Research

3.5 Hours

Zoom classroom observations

10 Participants

User interviews

Zoom classroom observations
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Zoom classroom observations allows our team to see how our targeted demographic interact with their classmates during a natural zoom class environment.

User Interviews

Our team conducted 10 user interviews with our targeted demographic to ask about their interaction experiences with their classmates in zoom classes.

The following user interview questions were:

What mobile platform do you use to communicate with your classmates?
In your own measurement how comfortable are you to reach out to zoom classmates you don’t know for help?
In your own measurement how comfortable are you to help your other zoom classmates on course material?
Would you use an app that helps better connect with your zoom classmates?

Affinity Diagram

Affinity Diagram Discoveries

Students who have online classes with low interaction often work alone.
Due to the low interaction it is hard to retain information professor that don’t promote engagement with other classmates.
Even with breakout rooms, it is still hard to connect with people.

If a platform presented itself, students would use it to collaborate with students.
Students are willing to reach out to help others.

Ideation

Initial Sketches

Our team needed to sketch out design ideas that would solve the common problem and themes that were discovered from our affinity diagram.

Our 3 main design goals were:

1

Make a class roster easily available with their contact information.

2

A chat feature to make it easier for the users to reach out to their classmates.

3

A group chat feature or forum to make it easier for classmates to ask questions and/or answer questions their classmates may have.

Mid-Fidelity

Sketched By Azya Guerrero

Mid-Fidelity User Testing

Our team used our mid-fidelity wireframes for our initial user testing to see if 4 of our users are able to complete our tasks efficiently and are able to accomplish our design goals.

Our tasks were:

1. Find an email of a I-300 classmate
‍
Avg Completion Time:
‍
2.9 Secs

2. Create a chat with a INFO-I300 classmate

Avg Completion Time:
‍
2.8 Secs

3. Create a group chat with 4 INFO-I300 classmates

Avg Completion Time:

2.9 Secs

Common User Pain Points

We also asked our users in our user testing if there were any design flaws that hindered them from finishing their tasks faster

The common user pain points were:

1

The group chat button was hard to find initially

2

The didn't know if initially if the text "chat" was going to lead to a new chat box

3

The class roster icon was hard to find

Final Prototypes

Our team took in the feedback from our mid-fidelity user testing to fix our user pain points to design a high-fidelity prototype that would accomplish our design goals in a more efficient manner.

Students are freely able to post questions on the appropriate course to initiate classroom collaboration among classmates in the comments.

Students are able to find their classmates through a class roster and be able to chat with them one-on-one by checking their online status on the app.

Students can initiate group chats to collaborate with one another.

Final Prototype User Testing

Our team wanted to make sure that our design goals were accomplished in a more efficient manner so we decided to conduct another user testing session with 4 new students.

Tasks:

1. Find an email of a I-300 classmate
‍
Avg Completion Time:
‍
2.3 Secs

2. Create a chat with a INFO-I300 classmate

Avg Completion Time:
‍
2.2 Secs

3. Create a group chat with 4 INFO-I300 classmates

Avg Completion Time:

2.2 Secs

Our design decisions on our final prototype was able to make our users complete their tasks much efficiently and there were no reports of new or previous pain points.

The Impact

Our mobile app after user-research and user testing allows it to make it easier for students to reach out to one another in their online course.

Students are able to help other students that need assistance in the course
Students that need help are able to easily ask their peers through an inviting user-flow
Students will perform better in the online course when being able to collaborate freely on the mobile app.

My Learnings

User-testing was a great test before submitting a final prototype that fulfilled our users' goals.
Heuristic Evaluation is a great tool to pinpoint specific user pain points for task completion.
Ideating solutions as a group allows you to think outside the box and work on ideas from each other.