An app that improves
student collaboration through
inclusion and empathy
UX/UI CASE STUDY
Winning Team
BrainStation x IBM Design Sprint
Timeframe 5 days
Tools Pen & Paper, Figma, Invision
Project Type Academic Group Project
Team Hope Liang
Jose-Carlos (Joey) Laguio
Matthew Ahn
Nina Paramonov
Rachel Fuhrer
Renee Yang
Project Overview
A rapid, collaborative process that includes client brief for tackling big problems through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with users.
Creative Process
Client Brief
Coastal University is a comprehensive post-secondary institution, offering undergraduate degrees in a broad range of disciplines. Consequently, they maintain a diverse and vibrant student body.
Key Context
Any student engaging with the university from out of their home country.
Users
International Students
How might we improve the experience of Coastal University students when collaborating as members of virtual teams both in school and work-related projects? The request is to leverage any digital technologies available to completely reimagine the international student’s education experience.
Request
Coastal University is a comprehensive post-secondary institution, offering undergraduate degrees in a broad range of disciplines. Consequently, they maintain a diverse and vibrant student body.
DAY 1
To provide international students with a seamless and collaborative educational experience
that inclusively understands their language needs in order to communicate confidently
with their peers and professors.
(What does communication mean)
Discovery+Research
Team goal
Performed research
57%
68%
post-secondary students reported
that their courses were delayed, postponed or cancelled
post-secondary students had
never experienced online learning before the pandemic
We believe that a lack of communication skills makes it more difficult for international students to collaborate with others in group projects.
Our hypothesis
How might we connect international students with communication resources and tools (written and verbal) so that they feel valued and heard in collaborative work?
Design question
DAY 2
Ideation
Competitor Audit
Our team started Task Circle’s solution process by gathering inspiration from existing products.
Hight Accessibility
Low
Adaptability
Low Accessibility
Google Translate
Hight Adaptability
Google Meet
Discord
Grammarly
How to Pronounce
Slack
Camera Translator
HelloTalk
Amazon Translate
Tandem
Key Research Findings
-Shuyi Li, 24, Beijing
Pain points
Needs and goals
-
Lack of group connection
-
No channel for support
-
Unorganized remote collaboration
-
More frequent check-ins
-
Transparency about their challenges
-
To feel valued and heard
Our findings did not support our initial assumptions as strongly as we had hoped.
“Language communication is not so much the problem. It’s the disorganized process students use to chat…”
DAY 2 + 3
Refinement
How might we improve interactions between International students and their project teammates, so they can feel more valued and included in their remote group projects?
Nicole, 22
Location: Shanghai, China
“I want a space to communicate my progress and challenges with my
team so that we can empathize with one another and work more efficiently.”
She’s a 3rd-year international business student who went back to Shanghai when COVID 19 hit. When she collaborates remotely, she has difficulty keeping up.
“The Shy International Student”
Design question_V2
Nicole’s Experience when she works on a group project, what does that look like?
01
02
03
04
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DAY 3 + 4
Execution
Sketches
After we understood Nicole’s pain, we elaborated those ideas into our initial solution sketches by empathizing features that allow empathy to support interaction. Using apps like Trello and Empath.
Wireframes
With our best sketches, we created wireframes
Team Page
Home Page
Project Page
Updated Page filled
Update Page
Team Page updated
DAY 4 + 5
Testing
After testing, we gained 3 key insights:
-
The Update feature needs more contextual copy
-
In case students don’t want to share, we could make the “Mood” indication optional
-
The toggle slider is not intuitive
We implemented these changes to simplify the user experience.
02
03
01
DAY 5
Final prototype
Design system
Aa Avenir
Primary font
Primary #23BE36
Secondary #36285D
Black #3A3A3A
White #FFFFFF
Prototype
Test me
Next steps
Here are the next steps to take to ensure the success of Task Circle:
1. We would like to gather more feedback through
research and target user testing to refine the product
design
2. Then ensure that educational institutions are
supporting our product to validate its viability in the
market
3. Finally, Task Circle can be published and shared with
the mass market and collect feedback