Amesite
Working with a founder CEO to develop a product design strategy for a tool that helps college students learn more outside of class
Problem Statement
In American universities, the size of mandatory, entry-level classes is usually very large (200-800 students). This is not an effective way of motivating and engaging freshman students. Our team’s objective was to create a mobile-first learning platform that engages freshman learners
Methodology
Design Overview
Secondary Research
The very first question that my team and I contended with was “what makes a platform sticky?” We wanted to target all forms of addictive media and pinpoint what makes that platform addictive or “sticky.” We looked at video games, websites, mobile applications and many more to understand certain elements shared across ‘sticky’ platforms. We used this knowledge to design the specific components of our solution.
What we found: The 4 Elements that make an experience “sticky”
Goals: All sticky platforms have well-defined goals that a user must achieve
Social Elements: Sticky platforms create immersive experiences by allowing users to compete or cooperate with their peers towards a certain task
Stories: Sticky platforms engage users by creating stories in which the user becomes the protagonist
Feedback: Sticky platforms supply the user with feedback in the form of rewards, statistics or advice
Primary Research
What kinds of digital habits do we see in freshmen students?
What are freshmen pain points in their education?
Brainstorming
Step 1: Brainstormed 30 ideas based on the design opportunities found from research.
Step 2: Grouped the ideas into themes such as goal, social interaction, social media, story, feedback, and reputation.
Step 3: Voted for the ideas based on the importance and creativity and picked the idea that got the most votes.
Step 4: Reviewed the ideas with the client and made decisions about key features.
Sketching & Wireframing
While sketching, each team member was in charge of strategizing and sketching how one of the four ‘sticky’ elements (social, feedback, goals and story) would manifest in the learning application, given the user research that we did.
My role was to strategize how feedback would be given to users
Final Designs
Newsfeeds: Learn from curated content & peers
Learning through lectures at university and online learning are not nearly as exciting vectors of information as Youtube videos or Instagram photos. Both these platforms recommend content based on what the user is interested in and connects the user with their peers and friends.
We designed the home page of the Amesite application to be a news feed that aggregates content that is:
from third party sources
relevant to the course material
relevant to the users own interests
This type of content engages users by effectively using out-of-class examples and case studies relevant to their course work
Course Videos
Our user research found that many freshmen students prefer to watch course lectures from home rather than attending in person. Rather than trying to motivate students to attend lecture, we leaned into this insight and tried to make the online lecture-watching experience more immersive and interactive.
The course video shows users who are watching with them now and their classmates' real-time reaction. Users can also interact with the instructors and classmates in the Q&A section
