Summary
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Problem: As students on a college campus of 25,000 students and packed classrooms, we sought to redesign the student workspace to optimize the classroom experience.
In 10 weeks, our team of 7 cognitive scientists researched the user experiences of students and their environments to led our human centered design project.
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Method
1. Ideation |
In the ideation phase of our project we sought to address issues most relevant to UCSD students. As students we have access to rich data of 18-23 year old adults. The aim is to use Contextual Design to redesign something that affects their lives and the lives of their peers. We sought to understand problems within college lecture halls to design better human interactions within the classroom.Through some preliminary research and observation we were able to narrow our research focus to understand the relationships between students and their classroom desk and chair.
Our project prioritized 3 key goals.
1. Improve Collaboration The classroom is an ecosystem: how can we design it to be learning-sustainable? How can we organize students to encourage teamwork and use each other as cognitive artifacts?How can we maximize rows and columns in a classroom to accommodate for growing class sizes? 2. Improve Learning Environments How can we design a desk that reduces distractors and intuitively rewards paying attention? How can desks better accommodate unique demands of varying majors? 3. Optimizing Orientation of the Classroom Space How can we better store personal belongings such as backpacks and skateboards? How can we reduce forgetting belongings? Where is space wasted and how can we repurpose it? |
2. Interview I |
The first phase of Contextual Design involved conducting interviews with a user group. This served as a valuable resource because qualitative data allows researchers to delve into the lives of users and find their needs directly. The interviewer, then, looked for the underlying needs that the user highlighted through their stories and experiences.
The demographic for our interviewing process targeted a variety of UCSD students of various personas. We interviewed students of different majors, ages, schools, and genders to consider the multi varied needs of a diverse student population. For the first round of interviews we designed an outline of interview questions that highlighted several classroom issues to provide a loose structure, but comprehensive in content interview. Interview Question Guide |
3. Observations |
Concurrently, we documented many observations by simply sitting in on classes and taking notes on the group dynamic, classroom interactions, classroom distractions, effective and ineffective uses of classroom space. This ethnographic approach was used by taking objective notes on the actions and behaviors of the students, rather than any mental states that may or may not have occurred. By accumulating information based on students’ movements and exchanges with their surroundings, we were able to figure out what parts of the classroom had the highest instances of being interacted upon. Moreover, by going into a classroom and taking an observant role in the class room we were able to gain insight into group interactions that individuals may not be attuned to. Later in our interpretation process, we used this data to identify problem areas in creating our affinity diagram and propel discussion.
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4. Modeling User Behaviors |
Dissection our interviews and observations in group interpretation sessions allowed us to compile and organize data for several data driven models. A few key findings from our data were that students prioritized personal space, classroom space, and visibility to the board the most in a classroom. We also found that regarding issues of interpersonal space students were more concerned with aisle space and seating space than they were with a discussion facilitating space. With issues concerning interpersonal space, students prioritized space for their belongings, desk size, and foot space. Given many of the key concerns generalized to space and visibility in the classroom we used this data in the creation of our preliminary sketches.
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5. Rapid Prototyping |
6. Testing |
7. Iterate Designs |
8. Testing II |
9. Finalize Designs |
Challenges and Outcomes. |
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