Corné Voorwinden
Student Progress
Finding a balans between school and personal life for students.
Origin of the project
During my internship at Clevergig (a SaaS company that create scheduling software for employment agencies) there were request of students to use the clevergig software as a planner for their school work. The clevergig software wasn't the right software for that so that's why I wanted to create software that will help student plan their school work and also keep a healthy balans in free time.
That's why for my graduation project I wanted to research and design a prototype that will help to solve this issue.
Target audience research
During my graduation project covid-19 was in full effect. Most of the lessons where online and it was a lot harder for a lot of students to concentrate and focus on school. Covid-19 was like a magnifying glass, enlarging the problems of students.
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Students struggle to keep a healthy balans between school work and free time. One of the reasons for this is that planning and keeping a schedule is difficult for them.
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The target audience is students of the study communication and multimedia design at the HvA in Amsterdam. This because I used to study here and that the students are familiar with tech and app designs.
The user
The empathy map shows that the student gets easily distracted. The reason for this can be their surroundings or their phone and especially notifications. The student gets Fomo (fear of missing out) and wants to check their phone.
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The student is aware of this problem. But in interviews they said this behaviour works like a proof of concept, in the past this "tactic" worked and thats why they keep repeating it. Even if there are better alternatives, they are most likely to keep doing what they are used to.
Desk research
During my research I discovered the self-determination theorie from Ryan & Deci. This theorie is use as the base of motivating students within my concept.
Extrinsic motivators can sometimes lower self-determination. According to Deci, giving people extrinsic rewards for already intrinsically motivated behavior can undermine autonomy. As the behavior becomes increasingly controlled by external rewards, people begin to feel less in control of their own behavior and intrinsic motivation is diminished.
Positive feedback and boost self-determination. Deci suggests that offering unexpected positive encouragement and feedback on a person's performance on a task can increase intrinsic motivation. This type of feedback helps people to feel more competent, which is one of the key needs for personal growth.
Survey
The goal of this survey is to get an idea of how students study and the use of a schedule or planning during studying. I was also interested to see wat factors influenced their study behaviour.
The visual below shows what important was for students, and would be a reason to use a planning tool.
Best, good and bad practices
By researching and using existing apps I discovered some best practices that work for my concept. To be more precise it is about practices I will use to motivate the target audience.
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sunsama is an existing planner application that focuses on being focused and calm. The two interesting practices is discovered in their app are:
- using language in a positive an motivating way
- Reflections to make better choices and having a clear overview.
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Todoist is an to-do app. They are very good in showing that the user is making progress. Showing the small steps motivates the user and leads to bigger succes.
Designing fase
After i had done the research and got to understand the user, how to motivate them and the market. It was time to start designing. I needed to create a flow of how the app should work, create wireframes and eventually after a few iterations the final design.
Flow
To show the basic functionality I created a flow diagram to show the main tasks the user can do.
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In this image is show the adding of new tasks and starting and "focus mode". the focus mode is an periode of time where the goal is to focus on the tasks and not to be interrupted by distractions and notifications.
Wireframes
Once the basic flow was decided on I created some basic wireframes. The wireframes give a general idea of the design and is the basic for the first round of testing.
Insights from wireframes
After testing the wireframes with the target audience it was clear that the first screen (the reflection screen) wasn't being used to its full potential.
In the next iteration the reflection proces was more a separate flow, rather than just an overlay. This helped to the user to be more thoughtful about their input.
This results in more genuine answers which will lead the user to make choices with more intent.
Moodboard
Once the flow and the wireframes were established it was time to create a look and feel of the app. The design language is shown in the moodpboard below.
The target audience are students of CMD (communication and multimedia design). These students are familiar with tech and to translate this to a design language I tried different versions and after testing with the user they preferred the "8 bit style".
Hi-Fi designs
These are the final screen designs in which the chosen design language shows. The design emphasises on the key elements of the app and keeps the design playful. I created a clickable prototype with some micro interactions.
Planning: The app makes it exciting for students to plan their school work and private appointments by focusing on the appointments/ agenda items they like.
Focusing: The app allows students to focus through "focus time" in which the student can't be distracted and won't get any notifications.
Reflection: multiple times a day the student gets the option to reflect. This will help the student to write of any negative feelings and focus on making decisions with intent.
Motivating: By keeping a positive tone of voice and emphasis on the positive behaviour the students gets motivated to keep up the good work.
Spacing
While designing the app I used a 8-point grid system. which allowed the design to be consistent, aesthetic and scalable.
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Using a grid like this allows the design to be easily implemented for a desktop design in the future.
Accessibility
For accessibility reasons I designed the screen with one primary action per screen, this makes it clear for the user what they can accomplish on a page.
To make the design extra accessible it tested the colour combinations. The visual below shows that there is enough contrast between the two main colours according to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).
Testing
During the design proces I tested multiple times. I did proof of concept tests, concept tests and accessibility tests.
The final round of testing shows that the design has a good hierarchy and the flow makes sense. This is based on eye tracking results shown in the image to the right.
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The feedback on the concept is also positive as shown in the reactions, which come directly out of the concept test.
Project summary
The concept "StudentProgress" tackles all the problems the students have. The app helps the student to create overview, reflect on their work and positively motivates the student to keep on planning their school work and and keeping a healthy balans between school and free time.
After finishing my graduation project i will keep continuing to work on the project together with my internship mentor and try to build it into app.