Ease: Redesigning a Platform for Academic Collaboration
Timeline
January 2024 - May 2024
Context
Class Project for HCI Course
Role
UX Designer and Front End Developer
Team
2 Backend Developers, 1 Frontend Developer, 1 Frontend Developer/UX Designer
The Problem
The problem
Since my enrollment at the University of Rochester, there was one thing that made doing coursework daunting. It was Blackboard Learn, the largely employed learning environment in universities across the country.
Blackboard allows students to go through school courses, complete assignments, and communicate with professors. In my case, it was the only platform given by the school for coursework.
This created a love-hate relationship with the system, because it was a tool that lacked in many areas, but was the tool that I needed for anything school-related.
UofR's Blackboard Home Screen
This clunky layout is how you message someone on Blackboard
What irked me, my classmates and my professors was the lack of direct messaging. This was very apparent in many of my classes because many of my professors ditched Blackboard altogether and created their own ways of communicating with students using Slack or Discord. In many of my class projects, Blackboard was the last platform we would reach for and preferred to use text messaging or other direct messaging services for working on assignments. Blackboard was the only university-provided tool for academic collaboration at the UofR. Our team’s goal was to find out why Blackboard’s collaboration tools were lacking and create a solution to fill in those gaps.
“I wish there was a better Blackboard!”
Problem Statement
Blackboard has many limitations for academic collaboration like being unable to directly message other users
However,
Blackboard is the only University-provided collaboration platform
Needfinding
Needfinding
Our goal for need-finding was to answer the following questions about academic collaboration and Blackboard:
What platforms do students currently use to collaborate in group projects?
What do students dislike/like about collaborating on Blackboard?
How do students plan group projects?
What factors determine whether a collaborative platform is effective for students?
Our audience for need-finding was fellow students who have collaborated on academic group projects at the U of R.
To answer our need-finding goals, we conducted user interviews and surveys. We recruited respondents through various social media platforms (Discord, WeChat, Slack, etc.), other classes with group projects, and conducting random interviews on campus.
Survey created using Google Forms
Surveys
Surveys were ideal for answering our need-finding goals, as we would be able to reach a large population of students to gather quantitative data on academic collaboration. For our survey to be successful, we would need to have gained a better understanding of what Blackboard lacks, problems in Blackboard’s design for collaboration, and improvements that we can make to a collaboration platform.
Sample Survey Questions:
On a scale of 1-5 from “extremely hard” to “very easy”, please rate how easy it is to do the following on Blackboard:
Reach out to group members about a class project
Conclude a time to meet with group members
Set up a location to meet with group members
Update group members on what work you’ve done for a project
Know what other group members are working on for the project
What platforms do you prefer to use to collaborate on group projects?
How often do you use Blackboard to collaborate on group projects?
What do you care about most when collaborating on an academic project?
Interviews
Interviews would be helpful for gaining in-depth insight into why participants feel the way they do about collaboration platforms. To have conducted successful interviews, the following information will have to be collected:
Why does the participant like or dislike Blackboard for collaboration?
Why do they prefer a certain collaboration platform over others?
This would be useful for determining what features to implement and what problems to solve when creating our collaboration platform.
Sample Interview Questions:
When assigned a group project for a class, what methods or platforms do you use to collaborate with group members?
How do you feel about using Blackboard for collaborative projects?
From your experience, what makes some collaborative platforms better than others?
Needfinding Results
Results
The survey was created using Google Forms and received a total of 41 responses. We did a total of 4 in-person interviews.
Survey Results
On a scale of 1-5, most people surveyed rated Blackboard’s collaborative features a 3
68.3% of people suggested an improved messaging system on Blackboard
70.7% of people wanted to see integration with calendar/scheduling apps on a collaborative platform
The most mentioned challenge when collaborating on Blackboard was Difficulty with Communication
More than half of participants considered switching to other platforms due to limitations on Blackboard
Interviews Results
Respondents generally avoided using Blackboard and instead took advantage of other platforms such as
Discord
Google Drive
Text Messaging
Respondents found these features useful for academic collaboration:
Voice Call
More cohesive and intuitive UI
Easier way of reaching out to other users
A "have read" feature for messaging
Prototyping
Prototyping
We employed an array of prototyping techniques: paper prototyping and wireframing with Balsamiq and Figma. Paper prototyping provided a solid foundation for the general layout of the UI, and the wireframes served as the blueprint for our application, detailing the placement of interactive elements such as buttons and text fields, and how users will interact with them.
We looked towards platforms interview respondents mentioned they used for collaborative projects. Specifically Discord and Slack. These platforms utilized a comprehensive “channel” layout in which users can message many different contacts while still being able to easily identify the different groups they are in.
In our final design, we utilized this channel system while combining the necessary features of Blackboard like accessing coursework and assignments.
Paper Prototyping and Balsamiq
Paper Prototyping
General layout of the UI
Event Management
Rough outline of calendar scheduling in Balsamiq
DMs/Messaging
Layout of how users would message contacts in Balsamiq
Course Messaging
Layout of how users would message professors through courses in Balsamiq
Course List
A way for users to view all enrolled courses
Prototyping in Figma
Low Fidelity
General Low Fidelity Mockup done in Figma
Low to Mid Fidelity
Showing channels, messaging and contacts
Mid Fidelity
Showing channel names, organized contacts and course list
High Fidelity in Figma
Introducing color scheme and design elements
Left Sidebars
The current channel is highlighted in blue. Users can click through important course materials and create project groups within the current course.
Main Communication
Similar to other channel based platforms, users can see recent messages, and communicate with other channel members through the central space
Implementation
Implementation
We used React to implement the front end for the EASE application and Firebase to persist data.
Implementation diagram
Final Implementation
Demo of Ease Application
Evaluation
Evaluation
We recruited 15 volunteers to test the efficiency of the EASE application in comparison to Blackboard. The participants were all undergraduate students at the University of Rochester. Most participants had never sent messages on Blackboard prior to the study. During the process of the study, we first helped the participants navigate the web application to gain familiarity.
The key performance metric was the amount of time it took for a participant to navigate from the home page to send a message. This process was done twice for Blackboard and EASE. We recorded the times in Google Spreadsheet and performed data analysis. The findings of the evaluation process are shown below.
We also conducted a follow-up survey with the 15 participants of our user study. Their feedback on the EASE application was generally positive, specifically for the aesthetics and intuitiveness of the user interface. Most importantly, they preferred EASE over Blackboard.
71.4% of participants rated EASE 4 on a scale of 5 for ease of use
50% of participants were able to find all features without assistance
100% of participants felt that EASE would be a great application for academic collaboration
Additional features that participants suggested are:
A course rating system
File sharing
Collaborative real-time editing for documents
An "add friend" feature
Reflection and Future Directions
Reflection and Future Directions
Overall, the process of working on EASE was fulfilling and I’m happy with our final product. In the future, if I get the opportunity, I would love to continue working on EASE and adding additional features that participants have mentioned!
Designed by Emily Jeong 2024. Icons by Icons8.
