Make teacher’s educational game managing smooth again
“My biggest fear is that we launch this and then teachers have a hard time using it... The games are good, but we want to take a methodological approach to make it easier for teacher to set up and administer expecially those who might not be tech savvy."
From heuristic evaluation and user testings, some severe usability issues with the existing product are identified:
Methods:
Open Card-sorting
Provide teachers with comfortable paths to get where they need.
Support them to perform this task without leaving the system.
"Classes" and "Games" sections would cater to two types of teacher's behavior:
Visual design is an inseparable aspect of user experience design. It is especially significant for this project since a big barrier of the existing version for targeting user teachers is the slightly intimidating gaming look of it.
As teachers view it as an administrative tool, our idea is to avoid the gaming feelings and create an approachable and organized feel. The biggest challenge is to help teachers who think themselves as not tech-savvy find confidence in using technology in class when using this product.
Finding an interface that brings back teachers' confidence.
From our design research, we found that teachers all are familiar with Google's product, even for those who claimed that they are non-tech-y. Google Drive and Docs were the most common digital products that teachers used for work.
I was really excited about my first time applying Design principles of Google Material Design. My favoirte part has to be the animation: spatial relationships, functionality, and intention of the system. Although I am still fairly new to motion design prototyping, I had a goood time trying it out myself.
"A material metaphor is the unifying theory of a rationalized space and a system of motion. Our material is grounded in tactile reality, inspired by our study of paper and ink, yet open to imagination and magic.” - Google Design
To really provide teacher with an approachable interface, I aimed to key mood of "organized, clean, trustworthy". Because teachers feel natural and comfortable using Google's product and also, the state of Michigan is proposing teachers to all use them, we decided to model after some Material Design guidelines.
Methods:
Contextual Inquiry
Rapid prototyping
The actual concern of a teacher to start using an educational game is not only the own level of tech-savvy, but the time that it takes for them to get the idea and get to the point that they can use it in classroom. I kept this requirement for usability in mind when designing the experience and cleared out the roadblocks in the product's onboarding experience, so that teachers could pick it up easily.
From the interview we learnt that, teachers concern about the in-class game experience. They want to make sure that all their students on track. Besides, they don't want technology to faile them in front of a group of kids. Thus, we have proposed a Live feature.
Once a first student logs into the game, the teacher would get immediate notification, and he/she can view live status in a popup window or it will be minimized to a bottom status bar with the number of students that are currently online.
Corresponding to the need to easily pick up, first time users will see an sample class after they create an account, which they can directly edit from. This would allow them to get to game selection or class set-up part straightforwardly..
In Game section, there will also be callouts to guide first-time users through for example, the subject and grade filters.
