OVERVIEW
The Problem
While online platforms offer students a convenient method of attending their classes, it also causes many students to be deprived of the emotional and physical aspects of class that keep them motivated and engaged in class. Having a computer screen in between one another, the limited opportunities for students to interact with the class negatively impacts their learning experience.
How might we create more opportunities for students to feel engaged and motivated throughout their remote classes?
The Solution
Virtua
an exciting digital classroom platform that gives students more opportunities for fun and meaningful interactions with the class through the gamification of remote learning.
Team
Independent Project
Duration
Februrary 2022 - March 2022
Role
User Research: Surveys, Interviews, Persona, Competitive Analysis, Information Architecture
UX Design: Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability Testing
Tools
Figma, Photoshop, Illustrator, After Effects, Miro
Incentivizing Participation
A fun motive for students to stay attentive and engaged in class
Virtua introduces an exciting way for students to express themselves through the customization of their avatars. Students can save up coins rewarded through attendance, questionnaires, and polls to unlock new outfits in the shop.
Revitalizing Classrooms
A more natural way of translating the in-person classroom experiences to online learning
Virtua brings a sense of familiarity back to online classrooms, giving students the opportunity to simulate the experience of navigating through the classroom, sitting at their desks, and presenting in front of the class.
Encouraging Teamwork
Diverse opportunities for students to collaborate with their peers
Virtua gives students the space to collectively contribute and build on each other’s thoughts. With a variety of tools to express different ideas, group work becomes more accessible and interactive.
Building Connections
An easier method for students to get to know their classmates.
Virtua provides private and comfortable spaces for students to converse in, when split into groups. Users can click on their classmate’s avatars to see their hobbies and interest, making it easier to open up to one another.
PROCESS
01. RESEARCH & DISCOVERY
Why Remote Classes?
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, it is apparent that the educational experiences of students around the world have been heavily impacted by the transition to remote classes. Being a college student myself, I personally have been having a hard time staying focused and engaged behind a computer screen. Therefore, I wanted to see if fellow students were having similar problems that I could help find the right solution for.
Initial Research
To get a general sense of direction, I started my research by looking into studies on the effects transitioning to remote learning has had on students and stumbled upon this statistic from NASFAA:
“76% of undergraduates identified the lack of motivation as the biggest obstacle for online learning”
Surveys
To grasp an understanding as to why students were feeling less motivated for remote learning, I decided to send out surveys to 22 college students and learned that the majority of the participants found the difficulty of engagement to be the main cause of their lack of motivation.
Interviews
To get a more in depth understanding of the user’s needs and pain points, I conducted 6 in person interviews with college students, analyzing how they interacted with the class through an online platform. I found that there was a common pattern concerning the lack of access to a proper learning environment and meaningful interactions with the class.
What is causing the lack of engagement?
With the absence of physical classrooms, students are deprived of the physical and emotional interactions that make the learning experience engaging and meaningful. As many students tend to conveniently keep their cameras and mics turned off for the majority of the class, the personal interactions that build connections become less accessible, making it difficult to stay focused or even interested in class.
Persona
Further synthesizing our research, we decided to create a persona to help guide our design approach and empathize with our users.
02. IDEATION & CONCEPTUALIZATION
Brainstorming
After identifying clear pain points and needs, I decided to start generating ideas based on these problems. I conducted a quick brainstorming session for potential solutions, with the research findings in mind.
Wireframes
I recruited some students to help decide on a few opportunities to move forward with. Based on these solutions, I started generating rough wireframes for the features that seemed more feasible to help visualize these concepts.
Features I explored:
avatars: move around and interact in a virtual classroom through characters that resemble the users
shop/reward system: instructors can distribute coins based on participation for students to spend on customizing avatars
collaborative boards: space for users to work together and collectively contribute their ideas
reactions: users can express how they feel to the class with fun emojis
Feedback
To see which ideas users resonated with, I decided to ask a few college students that I previously interviewed for their feedback.
People have stated:
“Getting rewarded by the teacher might cause stress over their approval”
“Customizing appearances to make themselves prettier might make them self-conscious about their real appearance”
Takeaways
The users generally had a very positive reaction to these concepts, expressing that it would be a fun and exciting way to promote engagement for online learning. However, there were certain aspects of some of the features that they thought might pose as a potential problem. Our findings from the feedback helped us realize that:
Avatar customization should be more focused on customization than self-portrayal.
The reward system should be more student oriented as opposed to the teacher having control
03. TESTING & REFINEMENT
Upon learning that my initial ideas could potentially be successful solutions to our problems, I decided to push these concepts forward and make improvements based on the feedback. For this iteration, I created a gamified online class platform that enables students to experience a more proper learning environment through their avatars. By incentivizing engagement through fun and exciting interactions, this product makes remote classes more enjoyable without hindering the learning experience.
Key features
Feedback
To get some input from our target users, I moderated user testing sessions with a few students that previously participated in the interviews.
Takeaways
Overall, our users had very positive reactions to this concept. However, they felt that there were certain areas that did not meet their expectations, primarily concerning screen sharing. As this feature is used very frequently throughout remote classes, users felt that there was room for improvements to make screen sharing a more engaging experience. After analyzing the data, I came to a realization that:
There could be more opportunities for students to engage with their classmates
The screen sharing experience could be more fun and interactive
There should be clear indicators showing that students are participating
04. HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPING
While refining this concept, I directed my focus toward improving the screen sharing feature and social aspect of this platform for a more cohesive experience across the product. The latest prototype was created with the goal of giving students more opportunities to build connections and feel more present in the class.
Key Features
User Flow
What Would I Do Differently?
Throughout the process, from interviews to user testing, I made students the sole focus of this case study. Being part of the target user group myself, I became tunnel visioned on catering this platform to students and ended up disregarding the needs of the teachers. I came to the realization of how important it is to understand the teacher’s needs and frustrations, as they regulate the engagement of the students every class. Moving forward with this product, I plan on expanding on my research by getting input from instructors, as it would help improve this product for not only the teachers, but also the students.