savnac
Overview
During the COVID-19 pandemic, remote online learning has become more and more prevalent and the challenges are becoming more and more clear. Students of all ages have struggled with online school but it's also clear that younger students have fewer readily available pieces of academic software that cater to their unique needs. Savnac is a piece of educational software primarily for distance and online learning such which was designed inclusively with a target underserved population through the use of a research-based persona.
My role in this project consisted of much group work and collaboration with my team as well as taking charge of the assignments page design and prototype (see prototype sections below).
Underserved Persona: Mace
Mace is the underserved persona that I created with my team. Using the description of 'underserved', we define this persona as representing a population that is not usually designed for in educational software. We conducted research to determine the most critical and unique characteristics of the kindergarten population in order to define Mace's facets and facet values. Each facet can be used to determine how Mace may use software and give information on what problems they may run into. However, since Mace is a young kindergarten student, we must also operate under the assumption that there is likely a parent or some other supervisor around when Mace uses technology. The sources cited in this persona foundations document can be found listed on this Google Sheet. Our 'mainstream' persona is a typical high school student with facet values which are the reverse of Mace's. This persona, Stevie, has an easier time using educational software and can be viewed on Google Drive.
Underserved Prototype Assignment Page
This is the assignment details page where students can see the instructions and details of an individual assignment. We have an icon next to the assignment title as a visual indicator as we found that icons are visually intuitive and helpful for children that can’t read, according to parents.com [61]. Additionally, we have more visual indicators in the form of tooltips. These tooltips and icons can help prevent the information overload described in trap card 16 (find this set of trap cards on the UI Traps website).
Note that these icons and tooltips are intended to be customizable by the teacher so that they can determine what words might be difficult for particular students or what icon might fit best.
Additionally, students can upload their assignment file. This may be difficult for a kindergartener with low autonomy and literacy who may be unable to locate a file on the device. Because of this, we added a ‘take picture' button for students to use their device to take a picture of their assignment and upload it directly. Despite the likelihood of kindergarteners being supervised, we want to give them as many tools as possible to improve their autonomy.
Based on one of our cognitive walkthroughs, we realized that students who can’t yet read won’t necessarily feel confident that they’ve navigated to the correct page when trying to submit an assignment. So, to clarify we’ve added the ability for teachers to upload example pictures, as seen in the screenshot.
Mainstream Prototype Assignment Page
This is what the assignment page may look like for a mainstream student (e.g. a high school student). The page set up remains the same but the content is more appropriate for the high school level and the content of the tooltips and icon has changed to accommodate the difference in level. Because the tooltips are customizable by the teacher, the content can be tailored to the students and words they may not know such as terms for lab equipment. The icons can also be customized by the teacher so that high school students can have age appropriate visuals on their assignment page. This page also shows how the text size selector can benefit the mainstream students by allowing them to see more of their assignment text on the page in a smaller font.