kellysawesomeblog-blog1 - Tumblr blog

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

MATHBOX CASE STUDY

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Viyc88l838k2ENLe47JvdCx94kvowvl1nHwIbU2Ts7g/edit?usp=sharing

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

Overall, we need to make a few adjustments to the lower half of the questions panel (due to users thinking the ?/Solutions button and Hint button do the same thing) and revamping the Home screen to make more sense. With a few needed tweaks in between in other areas such as the animated movement between screens as well as changing the “...” to a person icon on the Home screen, I think our app will come together nicely! 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

3 Specific Tasks - Kelly Quesnel

1. I want the user to navigate through a Placement Test.

“Starting from the opening screen, complete the Placement Test.”

2. I want the user to complete a lesson to see how often they use the Hint and Solution tabs.

“From the Home page, complete your current lesson.”

3. I want the user to know when they are taking a lesson versus a quiz.

“From the Home page, complete a Quiz.” 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

Round 2 of high fidelity UX testing. The tester found several of the buttons confusing and had some difficulty navigating. There are several places where the navigation needs to be improved. 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

This is an in-progress build of the app for testing. 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

USER TEST 1 - Donna Quesnel (Paralegal)

OBSERVATIONS

Looked for a way to exit the lesson half way through taking it. 

Did not know what the streak meant, but did like that it was recording her live results. 

Felt that the home page needed more heirarchy.

Home page needed less options to choose from. Only really thought she would be using the “current lesson” and “new class” options. 

Couldn’t press the login button, it was missing.

Loved the options to start lesson from beginning or to take the placement test to adjust her higher math skill level. 

TAKEAWAYS

Keep the back button in the quiz and lesson portions, but also add an exit button. (***they need to somehow both be in the upper left or right, maybe add a drop down menu).

Make “current road map” and “accomplishments” less of a priority on the Home page by making smaller or not featured right away. 

Add a login button after entering username and password (oops!).

Keep the “start from beginning or take placement test” page. 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

During the feedback, I tried not to explain/expand on any areas he found trouble with and really just wanted to listen to what he had to say. The more he talked,  the easier it was to understand the underlying problem from his view.

USER TEST 2 - Jordan Steranka (Industrial Designer)

OBSERVATIONS

When Jordan guessed incorrectly on a math question, he asked where the help button was to understand why the answer was wrong.

There is an existing Help (”?”) button, but he did not see it. 

He recomended adding a “?” button to the interface even if he still answered the question correctly on the lessons portion. 

He did not like the streak idea, and did not understand what it meant at first glance. He wishes instead it recorded how many questions out of 10 he is answering correctly. 

Three hints are too many. One is already more than enough. Also didn’t know what the hint bubbles were due to them being far away from the hint button. 

Needs more questions in the lesson plan. Felt that 10 was too short to cover a whole lesson. 

“Next” question needs to light up green after selected.

Asked us, “Are the three circles on bottom three hints for the ENTIRE lesson or for each single question?”

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

UX Testing

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

WIREFRAMES - USER TESTING

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

WRITE UP 2 - Kelly Quesnel

“In the long run, adding features is a losing strategy.”

Page 78 gives a real scenario, where two groups were tested on their reaction to an interface that either had minimal options, or an abundant amount of options. In a nutshell, we learn that it is better not only for the user, but it is also better for sales to have fewer options to choose from. “Users are happier when their choices are limited.”

I think it’s neat that whenever a new feature is added to a product, there are tons of records produced via analytics that might focus on anything from whether or not the user is using this feature, to how many times it is being used in one user’s session. This reduces time spent on adjusting interfaces to ease confusion and anxiety while in use and it also helps the company prosper.

In class, Owen and I have acknowledged the fact that it is better to delete unnecessary features. However, there will be times when there are absolutely no other features we can afford to take away, but the area in which we need them may seem too small, causing clutter. The book goes on to talk about how we can limit visual clutter in times when too many vital features must be present:

FROM THE BOOK:

Use white space or subtle background tints to divide up the page rather than lines. Why? Because lines sit in the foreground, so you pay more attention to them than tints or white space that sit in the background.  

Use the minimum possible emphasis. Don’t make something bold, large, and red, if simply making it bold will do.  

Avoid thick dark lines where fine, light lines will do. Limit the levels of information. If you have more than two or three levels of information on a page you may be confusing the user. For instance, limit the number, sizes, and weights of fonts. Try to keep to just two or three levels in total, e.g., a headline, subheading, and body text.  

Limit the variation in sizes of elements. For instance, if you’re designing an online newspaper, you might have a large block of text for the main story and five smaller blocks of text for secondary stories, rather than six blocks of text in different sizes.  

Limit the variation in shapes of elements. Stick to one button style rather than using three or four different ones.

I love to write, and took many English classes in High School and I vividly remember my teachers had one rule in writing: do not use “filler words” in writing. I was happy to see the book talk about this specific topic because not only is this important in English, but in design as well. It helps to eliminate clutter and can leave room for much more important features in a small 5″x4″ screen.

On the contrary to what I’ve been talking about, the book also states that oversimplifying can become dangerous in that it can confuse the user. I disagree with this statement, I think it is best to design things as simple as possible. However, if the design is “ahead of it’s time” meaning that it looks too out of the ordinary compared to similar interfaces in the same realm, this is when it can fail due to no common background.

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

Here are some pictures of early wireframes for the Mathbox app. 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

Here is an example of a journey map we did for our users. This is the ideal set of pathways we would like to have in the app. We would like the user to get sucked into the cycle at the end of the map in order for them to reuse the app and complete more lessons. 

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

Content Groups K - 12

Kindergarten Counting & Cardinality Operations & Algebraic Thinking Number & Operations in Base Ten Measurement and Data Geometry

First Grade Operations & Algebraic Thinking Number & Operations in Base Ten Measurement and Data Geometry

Second Grade Operations & Algebraic Thinking Number & Operations in Base Ten Measurement and Data Geometry

Third Grade Operations & Algebraic Thinking Number & Operations in Base Ten Numbers & Operations-Fractions Measurement and Data Geometry

Fourth Grade Operations & Algebraic Thinking Number & Operations in Base Ten Number & Operations—Fractions Measurement and Data Geometry

Fifth Grade Operations & Algebraic Thinking Number & Operations in Base Ten Number & Operations—Fractions Measurement & Data Geometry

Sixth Grade Ratios & Proportional Relationships The Number System Expressions & Equations Geometry Statistics & Probability

Seventh Grade Ratios & Proportional Relationships The Number System Expressions & Equations Geometry Statistics & Probability

Eighth Grade The Number System Expressions & Equations Functions Geometry Statistics & Probability

HS Number & Quantity The Real Number System Quantities The Complex Number System Vector & Matrix Quantities

HS Algebra Seeing Structure in Expressions Arithmetic with Polynomials & Rational Expressions Creating Equations* Reasoning with Equations & Inequalities

HS Functions Interpreting Functions Building Functions Linear, Quadratic, & Exponential Models* Trigonometric Functions

HS Geometry Congruence Similarity, Right Triangles, & Trigonometry Circles Expressing Geometric Properties with Equations Geometric Measurement & Dimension Modeling with Geometry

HS Statistics & Probability Interpreting Categorical & Quantitative Data Making Inferences & Justifying Conclusions Conditional Probability & the Rules of Probability Using Probability to Make Decisions

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

USER SCENARIOS / PERSONAS

3rd Grade Student

Age: 8

Location: Seattle, WA

Personality Traits: Hypersocial, Competitive, Friendly

What does he participate in? Soccer, Baseball, Water sports

Goals: Get better grades in school.

Frustrations: Failure, Challenges, Social Embarrassment

Values: Family, Friends, Sports.

Kramer Sims is a third-grader who has been struggling with division and fractions in his classes. His mom looks for a free way to get supplemental help for his classes, something he can do on his own. MathBox has been recommended to them from a teacher, and he starts using it. With the help of his mom he answers the profile questions, sets up an account, and chooses third grade math to start learning. He chooses to take the optional placement test to determine what he should focus on in the app. Due to several incorrect answers about division and fractions, he is told by the app that he should start the lessons halfway through the 3rd grade math curriculum. He takes 30 minutes every day to take lessons from the app. 

Returning Adult College Student

Age: 38

Blue Collar Worker

Major: Business

Personality Traits: Hard-working, loving, frugal.

What does he participate in? Pool & Darts, Collegiate Sports, Cooking.

Goals: Get a Bachelors in Business

Frustrations: Not providing ideal life for his family, running out of beer, his favorite sports teams losing.

Values: Family, Friends, Sports.

Chuck is a married man who is going back to school for business. During an intro to statistics class, he realizes that he doesn’t understand some of the core concepts and is having trouble keeping up in class. He looks for supplemental help that he can use to catch up. He finds MathBox in the app store and tries it out. He makes an account and chooses the statistics and business math course. He doesn’t take the placement test so he can start from the beginning. When he has questions, he posts to the in-app forum to get answers. His questions are quickly answered and he continues with the lesson. Chuck spends a little more than an hour every day. He quickly catches up and begins to succeed in his actual class.

9th Grade Student

Age: 15

Personality Traits: Introverted, Creative, Athletic.

What does he participate in? Drama Club, Art Club, Football.

Goals: Get better at math.

Frustrations: Losing in football games, being made fun of, not having a lot of followers on Twitter.

Values: Drawing (but only shows his art to girls he likes), sports, hanging with his friends, bonding with his Dad.

Corbin Bleu is a freshman student at Liberty High School. He thrives in subjects such as Art, English and U.S. History, however, moderately struggles in Biology and Algebra. He already takes tutoring lessons on the weeknights from his math teacher, but athletics are butting in to the group session time slots that he has been attending. He needs to find another way to learn math that is much more flexible and as efficient as learning from a tutor. He discovers MathBox, a smartphone app that quizzes him on lessons that he learned that same day. By taking the quizzes, seeing which ones he got wrong, and reviewing the explanation of how to solve it correctly, he feels much more confident in understanding the same content taught in class.

Mathematics Major at Western Washington University

Age: 22

Personality Traits: Motivated, Introverted, Intelligent.

What does he participate in? Robotics Club, not much else.

Goals: Graduate with Magna Cum Laude.

Frustrations: Getting any grade below a 95%, social humiliation.

Values: School, his family, and his pets.

Jordan Steranka is a mathematics major attending Western Washington University. He wants to be the top of his graduating class, but in order to do that, he has to receive A’s on every single exam for his last quarter in school. To make sure he doesn’t fall behind on the extremely complex topics taught in class, he refreshes his mind daily, for exactly 2o minutes in the morning by using MathBox’s refresher feature. If he feels extra motivated that morning, then he continues on to the series of quizzes that is tailored to the topics he is least efficient in.

Math Tutor

Age: 27

Occupation: High school calculus teacher, Part-time Math Tutor

Personality Traits: Loving, Likes to Have Girls Nights, Care-taker.

What does she participate in? Karaoke Nights at the local bar, pilates, Spin classes.

Goals: Build a family, buy a house, and invest.

Frustrations: FOMO of fun nights out, hates getting dumped, kids canceling on her math tutoring sessions (because she has a social life, duh.)

Values: Whisky, burley men in speedos, secretly writes fan-fiction on Tumblr.

Brooke Dione is a high school math tutor. Part of her strategy is to walk through the MathBox app with her students to help them understand certain content. Depending on what they are struggling with or how far along their skills have developed, she either has them start their lesson on the app from the beginning or take the optional math placement test to skip over content that would otherwise be repetitive.

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

WRITE UP 1 - Kelly Quesnel

“The more features you add, the less chance you have of coming across a new feature that is of real value to someone.” I found this statement interesting because many people assume that by adding several new and exciting features/buttons to an app, you serve them better, when in fact, all this does is further confuse them. I like to think of a user as an alien, or someone who has never used your certain device.  When one navigates a product blindly, all they desire are the most important features that gets the job done; by having extra features this may cause confusion and hence dissatisfaction. The book also goes on to say that “adding complexity also means you’re building a massive legacy of code that makes your product more expensive to maintain, which also makes it hard to react to changes in the market.”, meaning that not only does adding unnecessary features detriment users’ experience, it detriments your own company because it costs extra money and time that will soon be outfavored anyway.

“Know Yourself”

This chapter was clarifying, it relates directly to the app we are designing for MathBox. We want the user to feel at ease while navigating through our product but we didn’t fully realize how much work this will take to accomplish this. We really have to decide on the utmost important aspects of what our app needs (such as a user profile, opening survey, progress report, awards/badges, etc.) because although we have many great ideas, perhaps too many of them can turn out to be overwhelming to the user.

From the reading I think it’s also worth noting that we should consider where the user might be located while using our app. Our app requires a moderate amount of focus due to logical thinking (math equations). Therefore, users would most likely be at home where there might be several distractions at bay and might need a simple, memorable layout to easily jump back to when a distraction arises and subsides.

“Don’t assume you can teach users much or that instructions will help them. When they’re under pressure, mainstreamers tend to forget what they’ve learned, ignore instructions, and revert to behaving like novices.”

I never considered this before reading this chapter, but we may need to assume that our users are under pressure because they are most likely coming to our app for to relieve stress stemming from trouble understanding math lessons learned in school that day or a topic in Algebra that was forgotten years ago that one might need to know for work the next day. Making our app as simple as possible to avoid anxiety or pressure build-up is absolutely vital for us.

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

LOOKING FORWARD : MathBox

What are we trying to accomplish? 

Users will strengthen their math skills.

Who is it for? 

Ages 5+

When it’s finished and perfect, what will it do?

Pool the users’ strengths and weaknesses related to topics within math, tailored to their weaknesses and then provide a series of equations, multiple choice quesitons, mix & matching, etc. that have been gamified in order to seem more approachable to those who struggle or dislike mathematics.

[kellysawesomeblog-blog1]

MathBox INTERVIEW 4 (paraphrased)

Maxx Richardson : 7th Grade

Renton, WA

Q: What is your favorite subject to learn in school?

A: “I like Art and English the most. I don’t like Math.”

Q: Why do you enjoy Art?

A: “It’s fun to paint and draw. I don’t get to do that kind of stuff in my other classes. Our teacher let’s us make whatever we want. Right now we’re sculpting with clay and we get to turn it into a mug.”

Q:  Why don’t you like math?

A: “Math is boring. My math teacher goes too fast in class and then it doesn’t make sense.”

Q: Do you remember a time when math wasn’t so bad?

A: “Last year my teacher gave us candy when we answered a question right in math. We played another game too but I can’t remember how we played it.”

Q: Do you learn better by hearing things? Seeing how things work? Reading things?

A: “I think I learn best when Mrs. Levolde draws pictures on the board. (Why’s that?) It’s easier to see what’s going on. It’s really hard to know what she’s talking about when she just talks about it in class.”

TAKEAWAYS

Kids enjoy the creative freedom that’s associated with subjects such as Art and Literature.

Math can seem dull to students in which math doesn’t come easy to them, they need creativity or an element of reward.

Students seemed to remember games in math class above any other quality time in math class.